From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Thu Feb 24 2000 - 23:01:17 MST
CT, I need to do some more work on the ante/payoff matrix,
but in the meantime, suppose you are Charlie, and I am Alpha.
You know who I am but all I know of you is you are one of 20
lifeforms on a list of players whose characteristics are known to me.
The information I am trying to pass to you thru Bravo is this:
how many pets do I have. I wish to tell you without telling Bravo.
I know Bravo is a shoe salesman with a degree in French Literature.
So I pass the clue:
Amara sprinkled a bit of NaSi on her food in order
to improve its flavor.
Nowthen, CT, can you get the number of pets from that clue?
Think, then scroll down.
I am betting that the French Literature student will recognize
only that NaSi is some kind of chemical and will find a periodic
chart and guess that I have:
Na = element 11.
+Si = element 14.
=25
She will be thinking aquarium, and guess 25 pets.
Think some more, then scroll again.
I am betting that you, CT, are trained in the sciences,
and since you see from the original list of players that
I am trained in chemistry, therefore I could not have
made such an absurd error as NaSi.
You will realize that of course Amara sprinkled NaCl
upon her dinner, and that if one were to subtract the
bogus element 14 from the logical element 17, you
might be thinking more along the lines of a cat, a dog
and an amoeba.
If you correctly ascertain that I have 3 pets, you have given
me a huge clue as to your identity, for it would take at least
a modicum of chemistry sophistication to recognize NaSi as
an impossible combination of elements.
Have you an example? spike
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