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Three Idols

Classic:
Three gods A, B, and C are called, in some order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for yes and no are ‘da’ and ‘ja’, in some order. You do not know which word means which.

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Discussion

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ahaselhu 6 months ago

@daverd
You are correct, I misread that portion of the problem. Very clever.

pcm_1306 6 months ago

hats off 2 d 1 who created dis que!!

daverd 6 months ago

@ahaselhu: Random doesn’t randomly determine whether or not to answer yes or no, he randomly determines whether to tell the truth or lie. Whether he does one or the other, his answer is still no.

A simpler case is the question “Are you lying?” A truth teller will say no, and a liar will also say no.

ravi 6 months ago

@brunson
I think it does matter. If we assume that Random answers randomly every time then all that we can find out are how many have lied at that very instance only, and nothing over how consistent Random would be over time, i.e every time we repeat the set of questions we would have a different number of liars

ahaselhu 6 months ago

daverd, I don’t think your answer is correct.

Random is not required to answer no to your first question, because he’s not required to tell the truth. You’re trying to impose a new restriction on Random that he must truthfully answer the question “Is the following statement true?”. Random can still respond however he wants.

anurag 6 months ago contains spoiler (show)
zparmley 6 months ago contains spoiler (show)
zparmley 6 months ago contains spoiler (show)
zparmley 6 months ago contains spoiler (show)
zparmley 6 months ago contains spoiler (show)
zparmley 6 months ago contains spoiler (show)
zparmley 6 months ago contains spoiler (show)
daverd 6 months ago

anthonylo221: See my solution. I think it makes a lot more sense.

anthonylo221 6 months ago contains spoiler (show)
anthonylo221 6 months ago contains spoiler (show)
anthonylo221 6 months ago contains spoiler (show)
pkandel 6 months ago contains spoiler (show)
daverd 6 months ago

I have a complete solution that solves this problem in just 2 questions a third of the time, and at most 3 questions.

http://sadowl.com/Three-Idols-Solution.html

who 6 months ago contains spoiler (show)
seagull 6 months ago

@hatekathy
The assumption is only made in order to show the possible cases. You could just as easily say, “assume that ‘ja’ means no and ‘da’ means yes.” You’ll still come up with the correct
solution, because the answer you get shows which is which.

hatekathy 6 months ago contains spoiler (show)
johnmn3 6 months ago contains spoiler (show)
beebop 6 months ago contains spoiler (show)
ferret15 6 months ago contains spoiler (show)
brunson 6 months ago

@rickasaurus,
It doesn’t matter, think about it.

rickasaurus 6 months ago

“But whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter.”

Does this mean it’s randomly decided at the beginning of the game or does it mean it is randomly decided when each question is asked?

ameliewoods 9 months ago

wow…. i barely understand it even after reading the explanation twice.
grats to who invented this, you confused a lot of people.

ace 9 months ago

i wish i was smart enough to make a comment that contained a spoiler…..

city_slick 9 months ago

One of the hardest on here for surrrre.

kash 9 months ago

Wow…this is intense.

vette982 9 months ago

Hats off to the person who came up with this problem :)