![]() ![]() What’s the one yes-no question you can ask to figure out whether Pluto is a dwarf planet?Īs Boolos explains, you want to trap the knight or knave into giving you what you want. So for our first puzzle, suppose that you can’t remember whether Pluto is a dwarf planet, and you need to find out by asking someone nearby-but you don’t know whether that person is a knight or a knave. The first simple puzzle is actually an iteration of Smullyan’s classic knights and knaves riddles, introduced in his book, What Is the Name of This Book? In the puzzles, knights always tell the truth, knaves always lie, and your task is to find out, based on what they say, who’s who. But if you don’t, come on back and you can go over Boolos’ solution with me below. Good luck! If you succeed, you have my congrats. If you’d like to give the puzzle a try yourself, you can stop reading here. ![]() How he did it turns out to be one of the best lessons in logic and truth I have ever received. The master atop the mountain turned out to be Boolos, who solved the puzzle in 1996. Clearly my questions weren’t compelling the gods to answer the way I wanted them to.įrustrated, I went in search of enlightenment. Hours later, having asked the gods every yes and no question I could think of, I understood how the puzzle got its name. I asked A, for example, whether B was True asked B whether A was True and asked C whether he was True. It seemed to me that all I had to do was start by coming up with three questions at once and then work out their consequences. You do not know which word means which.Īlways up for a challenge, I sat down on my couch, pen and paper in hand, confident I could conquer the puzzle in two hours tops. 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. 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. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Three gods A, B, and C are called, in some order, True, False, and Random. The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever goes like this: He once tested himself by giving a lecture on Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem, “one of the most important results in modern logic,” using only single syllable words. The title was given by a philosopher of logic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a colleague of Smullyan’s named George Boolos, who-no slouch himself-adored logical challenges of any sort. One mark of Smullyan’s legacy is the interest philosophers and logicians still have in his most difficult puzzle, known as the Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever. ![]() “He is the undisputed master of logical puzzles,” Bruce Horowitz, one of his former Ph.D. Over his near century of life, Smullyan, 96, became an accomplished pianist and magician, made fundamental contributions to modern logic, and wrote about Taoist philosophy and chess. His books on the subjects of recreational math and logic, with titles like What Is the Name of This Book? and To Mock a Mockingbird, not only encouraged people to pursue careers in these topics but also changed how math and logic are taught. It is this sort of logical playfulness that Smullyan loves, and that everyone seems to love him for. (And into a beautiful romance: The two would eventually marry.) With logic, Smullyan turned a false statement into a kiss. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. ![]()
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