Got Puzzle?

Another thread on SDMB contained a lateral thought riddle. I love those. I love logic problems too. Anybody got some more to share? Work’s boring today. Entertainment my brainmeats.

OK, here’s an interesting question:

There is a certain tribe in Africa (tribes in puzzles are always in Africa) which has some interesting characteristics…

(1) They’re enormous gossips. Everyone in the tribe knows everything that is going on with everyone else. However, they tend to have a blind eye towards their own family. Thus, whenever there’s an extra-marital affair going on (which happens quite often), everyone in the tribe knows about it except for the cuckolded husband. And everyone knows that everyone knows. etc.

(2) When a husband in this tribe realizes that his wife is cheating on him, he ceremoniously and publicly throws her into the duck pond at sunrise the next morning.

(3) Everyone in the tribe is extraordinarily brilliant and deductive.

So an outsider to the tribe is visiting the tribe, and learns the above two facts. He also learns (due to the gossip) that there are currently 7 wives in the tribe cheating on their husbands. One day he’s addressing a gathering of the entire tribe, mentions the above facts, and mentions that he knows that there’s at least one cheating wife right now.
What happens next?

Oh, and I know another puzzle about a car, a red plastic chair and some twine, but I don’t have the energy to type it up right now :slight_smile:

Every husband that only knows of six affairs tosses his wife into the pond the next sunrise?

The guy gets eaten?

They all tell him to keep his nosy self out of their business?

Depends how easily angered they are. If they take their time and talk it over, it should be easy to deduce who’s been cheating. They have until sunrise after all.

If they don’t talk, all the wives will be drowned since there’s “one or more” affairs. Since there hasn’t been any dunkings or gossip lately, all the males will assume it was their wife.

Of course, if the wife was cheating “right now”, a quick role call woudl indicate who’s missing. :stuck_out_tongue:

Two easy problems:

  1. You’re changing your tyre and accidently knock all four lug-nuts down a storm drain. What do you do?

  2. A young girl is told never to open the door to the basement. When she does, she is shocked.

I tend to use the answer to #2 as my stock phrase for answering lateral puzzles.

Actually, I’ve heard this puzzle before, in a slightly different form. I probably heard on right on this board. Anyway, I think the OP might have partly obscured this point, but the tribe isn’t supposed to know there are exactly seven affairs, just that there is at least one. That means that at sunrise on the seventh day, the seven cuckolded husbands will push their cheating wives into the duck pond.

The logic goes like this: if they were only one afair, everyone in the village would know about it except the cuckold. The cuckold would realize that his not knowing about any affair was proof of his own wife’s perfidy, and would push her into the duck pond at sunrise.

Now, if there were two affairs in town, then everyone would know of both, except the two cuckolds, who would only know of one. When sunrise came and went without a ritual ponding, the two cuckolds would realize that it implied the existence of a second affair that they didn’t know about, meaning a bit of wanderlust right at home. Here you have to believe that every villager uses perfect logic, and trusts every other villager to do the same. On the second day, the two cuckolds would push the two wives into the duck pond.

Extrapolate out, and for seven affairs you get seven dunkings on the seventh day, and a very bad day for the poor, innocent ducks.

A bounty hunter is riding through the Wild West when he sees a series of wanted posters. He makes a mental note of the details and carries on his way. That night he meets a friend of his in a saloon and passes on the following information about the posters he saw. Each man is wanted for a different crime, has a different distinguishing mark, and was last seen in a different place:

The biggest reward is for murder
There is a bigger reward for the rustler than for Bad Bill Longley
John Wesley Hardin was last seen in Kansas
The reward on Johnny Ringo is next higher than on the outlaw who was last seen in Dodge City
King Fisher has an eye patch
The reward on the outlaw with a moustache is higher than on the man who carried out the hold-up
The rustler carries the next higher reward than the scar-faced man
The reward on the outlaw last seen in Fort Worth is more than on the man wanted for safe-blowing
The outlaw with the gold tooth carries a bigger reward than John Wesley Hardin

Which outlaw was last seen in Abilene (given that one of them was)?