Another poorly designed puzzle

[Robot_Arm]

@RickJay

Is the waist actually a “hole”? If I told you I had a hole in my shirt, of course you would not think I was referring to the waist, sleeves, or neck. “Hole in a shirt” customarily means a flaw, tear, or wear in the shirt causing a hole that should not be there.

Some shirts have button holes; they’re not a flaw or tear, but “hole” is right in the name.

@Chronos

Oh, and we also can’t put any upper bound on the number of holes in the portion of the shirt we can’t see. Ordinarily, a shirt would have at most one unintended hole, because once a shirt has one, it’ll get thrown out.

On another hand, does use of the word “shirt” in the puzzle imply a certain number of holes to begin with? The question doesn’t ask “how many holes are in this piece of cloth?” I’ve never seen a shirt that didn’t have something to put your arms through. Can the neck, waist, and sleeves be considered implicit parts of the shirt, or it wouldn’t be a shirt?

[Chronos]

Maybe, which is why I referred to “unintended holes”. Though as brossa points out, not all shirts do have a neck hole (or waist hole, if that’s even a thing): A shirt can also open in the front, and be secured by buttons (which have holes), or a zipper (which doesn’t), or velcro (which doesn’t unless you count the loops in the vel, in which case it has oodles of holes).

[Little_Nemo]

I think we should accept the basic premises of the puzzle.

1. We should treat the drawing as if it were the object that it depicts.
2. We should accept that the object is described as a shirt and has normal shirt-like properties.
3. We should accept that the visual evidence leads to the most obvious conclusions.
4. We should not hypothesize ideas for which we do not have visual evidence.
5. We should accept that an intentional or unintentional opening can be a hole.

[Peter_Morris]

Of course, the sleeves are tubes with a hole at each end, so the answer is 10 holes.

[Little_Nemo]

@Peter_Morris

Of course, the sleeves are tubes with a hole at each end, so the answer is 10 holes.

The sleeves are attached to the shirt so there are no holes there. Unless you consider the sleeves to be separate items from the shirt. But if so, the holes in the sleeves don’t count as holes in the shirt.

[Unpronounceable]

I’ve seen some women’s shirts that were front-only - the back was string-ties.

So, AFAICT, the best answer is “no less than two.”

If you want to get really pedantic - cloth is woven thread, so…

[Aspidistra]

I’m going to go with “four, and the apparent holes in the front are green splotches”.

Reason: You can clearly see the shadow of the shirt’s outline on the green background all around the outside of the shirt. There is no shadow visible at the ‘holes’. There would be if the holes were real - or even more likely, you would be able to see a ragged edge of the holes in the back of the shirt somewhere around the edge of the front holes. Therefore they’re green splotches, not holes. Shirt belongs to a painter. Nice neat finish they put on that wall behind…

[That_Don_Guy]

My answer is, “At least seven, but there’s no way of knowing exactly how many because there may be holes in the back of the shirt that are obscured by the front of the shirt”

[Max_Torque]

@That_Don_Guy

My answer is, “At least seven, but there’s no way of knowing exactly how many because there may be holes in the back of the shirt that are obscured by the front of the shirt”

I’m right there with you. Once the proposed “solution” opened up the door to the possibility of holes in the back of the shirt as well, there’s no way to know. There might be dozens.

The question should be phrased more like, “how many holes can you count in this shirt?”

[Chronos]

Aside: Aspidistra didn’t bump this thread. That was a spammer, who was unpersoned.

[septimus]

@That_Don_Guy

My answer is, “At least seven, but there’s no way of knowing exactly how many because there may be holes in the back of the shirt that are obscured by the front of the shirt”

I would also go with “Seven.” But Inner Stickler makes a good point in #37: based on that “Six” might be a good answer, making the assumption that much of the back of the shirt has been completely torn away. (This shirt doesn’t appear to have a hard-to-break seam at the waist.)

Some answers in the thread ignore that the Puzzle question specifically refers to “a shirt” not to a picture of a shirt.

@Little_Nemo

Yes, if you bring topology into it, it opens up some new possibilities. As you note, if you take a balloon and cut two holes in it, you have the same topological identity as a donut. They’re both cylinders, just with different proportions.

Nitpick: To turn a sphere into a torus, don’t you need to glue the two edges to each other after cutting the two holes?