General Question

luigirovatti's avatar

What's the most difficult riddle to solve in the world?

Asked by luigirovatti (3003points) February 19th, 2018

I DON’T mean a game like chess or tic-tac-toe, and I DON’T mean riddles like this:

https://www.riddles.com/archives/5831

I mean a puzzle, a question that involves LOGIC and/or MATHEMATICS.

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30 Answers

SergeantQueen's avatar

I can’t access your link on school wifi but here’s what I found

Three gods A, B, and C are called, in no particular 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.

janbb's avatar

Fermat’s last theorem

ragingloli's avatar

Formulating a theory of Quantum Gravity, that is both consistent with Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity.

Tropical_Willie's avatar

Which came first; the chicken or the egg.

ragingloli's avatar

Only a riddle to those who reject evolution.

Zaku's avatar

Why would there be one “most difficult” riddle?

ragingloli's avatar

@SergeantQueen
Kill them all, and let the 4th god sort them out.

LostInParadise's avatar

@SergeantQueen , That problem seems rather complex. Here is my initial take, which may be as far as I am willing to go. There are 6 ways of assigning True, False and Random to A, B and C. For each assignment, there are 2 ways of assigning Yes and No to da and ja. That gives 6×2 =12 possibilities. Three True/False questions covers only 2^^3 or eight of them. That means that in at least some cases, it does not matter what da and ja are.

For @luigirovatti , here is a much simpler problem of the same type. You are in an English speaking land where everyone either always tells the truth or always lies. The two groups are distinguishable by the clothes they wear, but you don’t know which is which. You come to a place where the road splits into two parts. You know that one leads to a city where you want to go and the other leads into the jungle. There are two natives at the roads, one from the truth tellers and the other from the liars. What one question can you ask to determine which road to take?

SergeantQueen's avatar

@LostInParadise Click the link. There is a huge, confusing section that makes no sense to me on the solution

LostInParadise's avatar

Thanks for telling the problem and linking to its history and solution. When I work up the strength and courage, I will take a look at it.

luigirovatti's avatar

@SergeantQueen: That problem was published in a journal, but can be made even harder.

janbb's avatar

@LostInParadise I know the answer to that one.

rebbel's avatar

The Planet Where They Have Batman, But Don’t Have Superman.

Zaku's avatar

@rebbel I don’t follow. Does Batman depend on Superman?

Or… if Batman’s around, I’d ask him – he seems to be able to solve just about any riddle with his Bat-logic.

rebbel's avatar

@Zaku It’s the same planet as the one where they have French fries, but no milkshakes.

imrainmaker's avatar

@janbb / @LostInParadise – if I may try..The question can be – “Will i get xyz colored dress that you are wearing by going this particular way?” and quote incorrect color on purpose. If from true teller group he will correct me.

kritiper's avatar

Is this all there is?

SergeantQueen's avatar

@imrainmaker couldn’t you just ask “what color is the sky?” or an extremely easy question with obvious answer that you know?

imrainmaker's avatar

^I thought of that earlier but how would I know which is the road leading to city by asking just that? I’m supposed to ask only one question right?

SergeantQueen's avatar

What if you said something like, If I wanted to go to the city what path would the other person tell me to take? Wouldn’t they both point to the wrong path

SergeantQueen's avatar

Let’s say the city is on the left (This can be reversed I’m just picking this to make it easy)
If you asked, “If I wanted to go to the city what path would the other person tell me to take?”
The person who always tells the truth would tell you to go to the right because that’s what the liar would say.
The person who always lies would also tell you to go to the right because the person who tells the truth would actually tell you to go to the left, but since he is a liar he wouldn’t tell you that.
Same thing if the city were to be on the right.

They’d both point you to the wrong path.

SergeantQueen's avatar

I seriously hope that’s right i’ve been thinking about this all day

janbb's avatar

@SergeantQueen The answer is, you ask, “If I asked you, which is the road to the city, what would you say?”

dxs's avatar

-Riemann Hypothesis
-Creating an algorithm to (quickly) detect if a number is prime
-Use mathematical equations to describe the motion of a fluid in space

SergeantQueen's avatar

@janbb Wouldn’t you get two answers?

imrainmaker's avatar

^Yeah..I think so too.

janbb's avatar

@SergeantQueen @imrainmaker No, because the liar is going to lie about what he would tell you, so he would actually tell you the true answer. And the truth teller would tell you the truth. I always have to think about it a while to understand it again; it’s a riddle my Ex and BIL used to talk about.

kritiper's avatar

Everything I tell you is a lie.

LostInParadise's avatar

@SergeantQueen , Your answer was correct as was @janbb ‘s answer.

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