Logic Puzzles

-
I enjoy doing logic puzzles - you know, the ones where they give you a list of clues and you get to fill in the charts to come up with the answers. I've been solving a lot of them lately, and a couple days ago I wondered how difficult are these to make up?

So, I made a couple. They aren't terribly hard to come up with. Essentially I started with the answers, then wrote a couple clues, then solved the puzzle as far as I possibly could using those clues, then added others to fill in the gaps solving it as I went, until I had enough clues to solve it completely.  I thought I'd share them with you. (Note these are entirely fictional. While the names may correspond to the names of my children, the details in the puzzles were made up for the sake of the puzzle and have no bearing on real life.)

Problem 1.

One Saturday morning, the four Hiatt children woke up at a different time, ate a different cereal for breakfast, and wore a different colored sweater. Can you figure out what time each child got up, what cereal they ate and what color sweater they wore? (Names are Hannah, John, Joshua and Peter; times they got up were 7:00, 7:15, 7:30, and 7:45. Cereals were Cocoa Puffs, Honey Comb, Lucky Charms and Fruit Loops, and sweater colors were red, blue, purple and brown.)
  1. Peter woke up 15 minutes after the person who wore the blue sweater.
  2. The person who ate cocoa puffs for breakfast got up 15 minutes before the person who wore the purple sweater.
  3. Hannah did not eat Lucky Charms.
  4. The person who wore the brown sweater got up 30 minutes after Hannah.
  5. John is either the person who ate Cocoa Puffs or the person who wore the purple sweater.
  6. The person who woke up at 7:15 wore the red sweater.
  7. John woke up before the person who ate the Fruit Loops.
Problem 2.

The four siblings moved out of the house the same year with dreams of pursuing a different career. Each moved to a different state, then ended up doing something different than they had planned. Can you figure out in which month each moved out, what they had wanted to do, and what they ended up doing? (The occupations they had wanted included an author, an inventor, a programmer and a zoo keeper. The Occupations they ended up with were artist, musician, pilot and professor. The states they moved to were Alaska, California, Nevada and New York, and the months they moved out in were June, July, August, and September.)
  1. The person who had wanted to become an inventor, who is not Joshua, did not move to California.
  2. Peter moved out before the person who moved to California.
  3. The artist moved out in August.
  4. The person who moved to Alaska moved out after the person who wanted to become an author, who is not Peter.
  5. Peter is not the professor.
  6. The person who wanted to become a programmer, who is not John, moved to Nevada.
  7. The four people are the artist, the person who wanted to become an inventor as a child, the person who moved to New York, and the person who left home in July.
  8. The person who wanted to become a programmer moved out after the person who became a musician.
  9. Hannah moved out after the person who moved to Nevada but before the person who became a pilot. 
Click here to open and print a pdf file with a table to fill out here.

Comments

  1. Becky McClellanFebruary 24, 2014 at 8:41 PM

    I finally got these. The first one was fairly easy but it took a couple of days to figure the second one out!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Talk about Gratitude

-
I recently told my bishop that I enjoyed giving talks in Sacrament Meeting, and it is true. I didn't expect, however, that I would get an email from a bishopric member on Thursday last week to say that his talks for Sunday had to leave town, and would I be willing to speak? Here is the talk that I gave on Sunday, May 27th, 2012: For my topic today, I was given a talk which was given by President Monson in 1992, entitled “An Attitude of Gratitude”. In his talk President Monson begins by telling the story of the 10 lepers. I would like to share it with you. In Luke 17 we read: And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: And they lifted up their voices, and said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” And when he saw them, he said unto them, “Go show yourselves unto the priests.” And it came to pass, that, as they went,
Read more

School closing, Josh adventures, Back pain relief...

-
On Wednesday school was cancelled all over the Denver area because there was a credible threat that an 18 year old woman with a fixation on the Columbine shooting would attack a school. Apparently she arrived in Denver and bought a gun and then vanished, so they shut down everything just in case. (They found her body later that day... She committed suicide. More info here .) John was frustrated that school was cancelled because one acts are coming up (they are this week!) and he needed the rehearsal time. Instead, John took advantage of the free day to go to School of Mines to check out the campus and talk to someone about getting his admission deferred. I got a ride to my book club, and both of us were home again before Josh and Peter rolled out of bed. Early in the afternoon I took Josh to Children's Hospital to see a cardiologist about his seizures . They did an EKG, but the results were normal. He doesn't have a heart murmur or anything else they could identify. I still thi
Read more

How Clean is Clean Enough?

-
Image
How clean is "clean enough"? I realize this question is loaded and the answers are very individual, so for a moment, think about yourself and your home and consider, for you, how clean is "clean enough"? What is the difference between a "quick clean", a "daily clean" and a "deep clean"? At what point do you consider your home "clean enough"? Does "clean enough" mean having a clear path from the front door to the other rooms in the house? Is it having the clutter picked up and the floors vacuumed? Must it be dusted every week, every month, or at all? Is it a quick swipe on the surface to remove the dust or crumbs? Is it a scrub with disinfectant? Is it clearing tables and desks, or delving into cupboards and drawers, purging and organizing?    Does it depend on the day of the week? Is "clean enough" on a weekday the same as "clean enough" on a weekend? If not, is it more clean, or less? Is there a
Read more