A father gathered his three sons and told them he would die soon and needed to decide which son would inherit his land. He gave them the following test.
“Go to the market and purchase something that is large enough to fill my bedroom, but small enough to fit in your pocket. Based on what you bring I will decide which of you is wisest.”
All three sons went to the market in search of something to satisfy their father’s demands. When they returned the father gathered them in his bedroom.
The first son put down pieces of cloth that he had bought and laid them end to end across the room, but it barely covered any of the floor.
The second son laid down hay but there was only enough to cover part of the floor.
The third son showed his father what he had purchased and the father announced, “You are truly the wisest and will inherit my land.”
The thunder comes before the lightning, And the lightning comes before the cloud, The rain dries all the land it touches, Wrapping the earth in a blood red shroud.
Putting the information in a table makes it easier to solve. We’ll use A for Angie, B for Brenda, T for truth and F (false) for lying.
S
M
T
W
Th
F
S
A
T
F
F
F
T
T
T
B
T
T
T
T
F
F
F
To begin with, there aren’t any days where both of them told the truth and lied the day before, so we know one of them must be lying.
So we have two options, either Angel is lying or Brenda is.
Option 1. Angel is lying.
In order for this to be the case, she needs to be lying today and telling the truth yesterday, so we need two days in a row with T F. And if Brenda is telling the truth, she would need two days with F T. That means we’re looking for two days that have
Angie: T F
Brenda: F T
Option 2. Brenda is lying.
This is just the reverse of the above, so we need to find:
Angie: F T
Brenda: T F
The only day that matches either of the two options is Thursday, and it’s option 2. Brenda is the liar.
The magic word – please. It makes people do things they otherwise wouldn’t be inclined to do. When parents are teaching children about manners, they call it the magic word and wait to fulfill a request until the child says please. Once the child says it, the parent feels bound to do it to show the child that it works.
Joe and Andrea want to copy three 60-minute cassette tapes. They have a 2-cassette recorder to copy the tapes, allowing them to copy two tapes at a time. Each side takes 30 minutes to be copied, so two tapes can be copied in an hour and the third will take another hour. Andrea bets Joe she can copy all three tapes in 90 minutes. Does she win the bet?
In the first 30 minutes Andrea copies the A sides of tape 1 and 2. In the second 30 minutes, she copies tape 1 side B and tape 3 side A (finishing Tape 1). In the last 30 minutes, she copies tape 2 side B and tape 3 side B.