Intelligence test(s)

138 Facts curator on the tickle test, and a collaborator on the cupid test. 66% empirical, 42% public, and 38% teaching-oriented makes sense given that I've been working in science and dislike students

So, all the women in the village are alive at the time of the missionary's tale-telling, therefore no husband knows of his wife's infidelity.

After the announcement(and we're assuming it's true, due to the missionary's reputation) the infidelity of at least one wife is exposed.

All the men, except the husband(s) know who is guilty. But none of them can reveal it due to their inherent rule system.

Frankly, if this were real life, all male eyes would swivel to the cuckolded spouse(s) and that would be that.

But this is a tortuous problem in logic so it can't be that simple.

My problem is the first two rules aren't playing well together for me. Couldn't there be any number of unfaithful women if no one tells the husbands? That is, A, spouse of C, and B, spouse of D, could both be unfaithful and C & D would never be told, that is D would know about A, and C would know about B, but neither C nor D would know of their own wives' behaviour. So when the big revelation comes, any number of the husbands could be ignorant of the guilty parties, with the rest knowing all. And since the rest won't tell, the husbands still don't know if theirs is the unfaithful one.

Obviously I'm missing something here

I can only see two outcomes.

If more than one woman has been unfaithful it doesnt seem like anyone will be stabbed as everyone can assume that someone else has been cheated on.

If it's just one then she will be stabbed, as her husband (due to not knowing of any infidelity he knows his wife must have cheated) would stab her?

magerette said:

So, all the women in the village are alive at the time of the missionary's tale-telling, therefore no husband knows of his wife's infidelity.

Click to expand...

Correct.

After the announcement(and we're assuming it's true, due to the missionary's reputation) the infidelity of at least one wife is exposed.

Click to expand...

Think this one through again:

(Case 1 There is exactly one unfaithful wife in the village.
(Case 2 There is more than one unfaithful wife in the village.

All the men, except the husband(s) know who is guilty. But none of them can reveal it due to their inherent rule system.

Frankly, if this were real life, all male eyes would swivel to the cuckolded spouse(s) and that would be that.

But this is a tortuous problem in logic so it can't be that simple.

My problem is the first two rules aren't playing well together for me. Couldn't there be any number of unfaithful women if no one tells the husbands? That is, A, spouse of C, and B, spouse of D, could both be unfaithful and C & D would never be told, that is D would know about A, and C would know about B, but neither C nor D would know of their own wives' behaviour. So when the big revelation comes, any number of the husbands could be ignorant of the guilty parties, with the rest knowing all. And since the rest won't tell, the husbands still don't know if theirs is the unfaithful one.

Obviously I'm missing something here

Click to expand...

Yes, obviously you are. Perhaps you might want to re-read the puzzle, very very carefully -- there's one crucial piece of information there that none of you appear to have latched on. It's in one of the italicized phrases, actually...

Zaleukos said:

I can only see two outcomes.

If more than one woman has been unfaithful it doesnt seem like anyone will be stabbed as everyone can assume that someone else has been cheated on.

If it's just one then she will be stabbed, as her husband (due to not knowing of any infidelity he knows his wife must have cheated) would stab her?

Click to expand...

You too are missing that one crucial piece of information in the puzzle. Re-read it very carefully, especially the italicized bits.

Ummm... nothing will happen next, because whatever will happen will not happen before the day after?

No, the puzzle doesn't hinge on the definition of the word "next..." but the rest of your answer is tantalizingly close to the solution. IOW, you hit on the crucial piece of information I was hinting at.

Prime Junta said:

(1) If any woman in the village is unfaithful to her husband, every man in the village will know about it immediately, except her husband.

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Does every woman in the village have husband?

Doesn't matter.

Nothing will happen that day, the stabbing will happen next morning??

Ummm... I think it depends. This is similar to the puzzle with the green-faced monks, right?
Let's suppose I'm hubby. The missionary tells me there was at least one unfaithful wife in town. If I didn't know about any other unfaithful wives in town, I'd have to kill my wife, because the missionary always tells the truth, right? If I knew of another unfaithful wife in town, I'd do nothing because I'd think the missionary meant the other unfaithful woman. But when nobody had died the next morning, I would assume there were at least two unfaithful wives because I'm perfectly logical and so there must be another hubby in town who thought exactly the same and didn't kill his wife because he thought the missionary had been talking about my wife... dang, can't explain it too well. The next morning we'd both kill our wives, right? *scratch scratch*

I get your solution till the part when in the next next morning we both have to kill our wives why?????the commissionary could be talking about another third unfaithful...however if I only know of one unfaithful and she's not killed the next morning then i'll have to kill my wife, and if i only know of two unfaithful and they are not killed in the third day then i'll kill my wife and so on until all unfaithful are dead
So all unfaithfuls will be killed on the (number of unfaithfuls)th day?????

If all the men know (apart for the husband) then the men that know the lest amount of cheaters will know it's their wife(s) that have cheated n-1 in mathematical terms.

well let's suppose the number of cheaters is n , then men are divided in 2 groups:
1.those whose wives cheated on them and they will know of n-1 cheaters
2.those whose wives are faithful or not married and they will know of n cheaters
Thus on the (n-1)th day all group 1 will gather and stab their women..I guess

I'm going with Jaz here:

Suppose the missionary is indeed telling the truth.

1) If there was only one unfaithful woman, her husband will stab her to death the next morning, because he didn't know of any other unfaithful ones.

2) If there were more than one (but not all) unfaithful women, nothing will happen, because all husbands already knew that not all women in the village have been faithful.

Of course, it would be a simple matter to find out every unfaithful woman by doing what's already been suggested by others here: let every husband say how many unfaithful women he knows; those who know one less than others have an unfaithful wife.


If, on the other hand, the missionary was not as truthful as everyone thought he'd be, there will be blood and suffering for all women the next day.

However many women have been unfaithful will be killed in n days from the first day after the priest? (was it?) statement?

so if there was 1 unfaithful wife she'll be killed on the first day because the husband doesn't know of any others so it must be his own.

For 3 unfaithful wives the husbands will know on the 2nd morning as they can tell by the days that go past how many unfaithfulls there are. So, if 3 wives are killed on the 3rd day the other husbands know that their wife is faithful and the killing is stopped. Does that make sense?

Jaz said:

Ummm... I think it depends. This is similar to the puzzle with the green-faced monks, right?
Let's suppose I'm hubby. The missionary tells me there was at least one unfaithful wife in town. If I didn't know about any other unfaithful wives in town, I'd have to kill my wife, because the missionary always tells the truth, right? If I knew of another unfaithful wife in town, I'd do nothing because I'd think the missionary meant the other unfaithful woman. But when nobody had died the next morning, I would assume there were at least two unfaithful wives because I'm perfectly logical and so there must be another hubby in town who thought exactly the same and didn't kill his wife because he thought the missionary had been talking about my wife... dang, can't explain it too well. The next morning we'd both kill our wives, right? *scratch scratch*

Click to expand...

Bingo.

And POLYGON restated it as the complete answer.

Or, assuming the women were equally good logicians as the men, they'd be outta there faster than you can say "honor killing."

That was a nice puzzle,
here's a puzzle my friend told me a few days ago and he still hasn't given me the answer,
here it goes,
2 friends went to a store to buy some groceries. The total of their items is 50$.Each one of them paid 25.
Yet, when the honest store owner checked the sales he discovered that these items are 45 $. So he sent his worker after them to give them back their 5 bucks. However, the worker wasn't as honest as his boss and stole 2 $. He then returned 1.5 $ to each of the 2 friends.
Now, each one of them paid 25-1.5=23.5$
if u add them together u get 23.5+23.5=47
add the amount the worker stole:
47+2=49
where is the remaining dollar????

It doesn't exist. It's a well known maths paradox. Half of $45 is $22.50, plus $1.50 makes $24. Times 2 is $48 and now add in the $2 stolen and it equals $50!!

Yeah, I remember one like that from an economy course. If I recall correctly, it's all about debits and credits.

The worker stole 2 $, so the full price for our two friends is 47 $, not 45. In other words, they pay 45 $ to the store owner plus 2 $ to the worker.

The error in your calculation is that you are adding the stolen 2 $. But those 2 $ are part of the 5 $ discount, so they need to be subtracted: 50 - 1.5 - 1.5 - 2 = 45, which is the actual price of those items, and all is fine.

Does that make sense? If not, someone with more experience in economics will have to explain it better.