Last week's brainteaser has been updated with the answer. This week is a logic puzzle that was devised by "puzzle-master" Raymond Smullyan and has been deemed one of the hardest ever. The puzzle:
Three gods A, R, 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, R, 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 "dam and "ja," in some order. You do not know which word means which.
Some hints:
- It could be that some god gets asked more than one question (and hence that
some god is not asked any question at all).
- What the second question is, and to which god it is put, may depend on the answer to the first question. (And of course similarly for the third question.)
- Whether random speaks truly or not should be thought of as depending on the flip of a coin hidden in his brain: if the coin comes down heads, he speaks truly; if tails, falsely.
- Random will answer da or ja when asked any yes-no question.
I'll go ahead and post a link to the answer, but I haven't checked it yet so please don't post the answer in the comments if you've already looked (but feel free to guess).
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