Gah, sorry Colibri, didn’t see your post.
or ianzin. or GaryT
I’ll go away now…
ETA
Oh, I think this has to be it. It reminds me of the story about the woman who got a phone call from a man claiming to be “the viper,” and he was coming to her house right then. She understandably freaks, but before she can escape a car pulls into her driveway and the man starts coming up the stairs. When he gets to the top he opens her door and says “I and the viper. I vish to vash and vipe your vindows.”
I am sorry, I must missed it but can you be more specific on which those ‘perfectly’ satisfactory answers were?
You need me to read the thread for you?
No, I read through the thread and I haven’t seen one answer that suits all the conditions set out in the OP. So if you know something I don’t, then please enlighten me.
What’s the problem with ClintPhoenix’s answer?
As most of us understood it, the questions boils down to: How can a mute man effectively communicate something to a blind man?
Several very plausible answers to this question have been posted in this thread, even if they’re not the “correct” answer you seem to be looking for.
so effectively what you’re asking is how can a mute man communicate a complicated story directly to a blind man, without using any sort of code or sign language whatsoever to communicate it.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say:
I mean you have an IQ higher than any mere mortal and even you can’t solve it!!
I will try, even with my relatively low IQ.
Riddle as specified in the OP, “A blind person, a mute person and a deaf person are friends. All 3 r married (to 3 separate women) and all 3 live together. One day the deaf person’s wife beats up the blind person’s wife (don’t ask me why). The only witness to this event is the mute person. Now the wife doesn’t want to tell her husband about this coz she is worried abt the consequences and so are the other wives so they don’t want to get involved either. The mute guy can’t hide this from his friend and wants to tell him. The question is how. Oh and all of them r illiterate, poor and don’t know any form of sign language (braille, morse etc.)”
My answer (post #16) “The mute guy tells the blind man what happened. ‘Mute’ can mean ‘unable to speak’. But it can mean other things. He could be a professional mourner, or a man who sells devices that modify the sound made by musical instruments. See: [link to definitions of ‘mute’]”.
Brujaja’s answer (post #29) The mute guy uses a simple text-to-speech program.
Lyanthya’s answer (post #63) “The mute guy is the blind guy.”
Kilobyte, I think you mean “I haven’t seen one answer that suits all the conditions set out in the OP and the conditions I added in subsequent posts.”
I’ll say again, this is the kind of riddle that is typically solved by the person asking the riddle being willing to answer yes and no questions. Since the person with the solution is not available, then this becomes more difficult unless you are willing to act as the intermediary. e.g.
Question: Is the “mute” a professional mourner?
Answer: no.
Question: is the mute able to speak at all?
Answer: no.
Question: Does the mute person have access to a computer (for text-to-speech)
Answer: no
etc.
Also, I would suggest that if your friend is offering a money prize, you should suggest that the contest have a time limit and that the person asking the question write down the answer on a piece of paper in a sealed envelope that can be consulted later when the “contest” is over. Otherwise it would be easy to deny that any one is coming up with the right answer.
All those except are invalidated in the OP itself:
a. The mute in the riddle is a person who doesn’t have the ability for verbal communication.
b. The mute is said to be illitrate in the OP.
c. The OP specifically says there are 3 seperate people excluding their wives.
illiterate can mean “having little or no education” ( Illiterate Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster ) . So under that definition, an illiterate person could still be a person that knows enough to type a few simple words on a computer: “def man wife beat up ur wife”.
[Moderator Note]
As I have already said, let’s drop the snarky references to IQ. Further remarks of this kind will receive an official warning.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
This is not so.
This may be the case, but it is not stated in the OP. The OP just says ‘a mute person’.
See Arnold Winkelried’s suggestion.
There can still be three separate people even if Lyanthya’s answer is accepted. One who is deaf, one who is mute and blind, and third man who could have more or less any characteristics you want.
Colibri - apologies, didn’t see you earlier Mod note. Happy to comply.
I meant to say all except a, missed out the ‘a’.
And an illitrate cannot read or write legible words, even if a person is able to write just his own name, he is not classed as illitrate.
Please use your common sense. If there was a another person other than the disabled 3 I would have said so in the OP. I stated that “a deaf person, a mute person and a blind person are friends. All 3 are married and all 3 live together”. I don’t understand how it could have been clearer without spelling it out in ridiculous detail. If the mute and blind was one person, I would have said “a deaf person, a mute and blind person were friends. Both live together and both are married.”
But that’s the point of a lot of riddles. The riddler tries to outsmart you by omitting that kind of obvious statement. Like, if you said “Mary and John are lying on the floor dead, surrounded by water, oh and by the way they’re fish, how did they die,” it would be a pointless riddle.
The Blind guy isn’t deaf. Make the sound of one person attacking another (either by slapping ones hands or such things like that), and when he asks what’s going on/ who’s hitting who?
The Mute guy can grab the Deaf Person’s Wife, and then the Blind guy’s Wife.
Or he could just slap the Blind Guy’s Wife and when the Blind guy asks who did it, he could gesture to the Deaf person’s wife.
What is the objection to the solution I posted?
Good, so we have achieved agreement! You concede that you have already received at least one answer that satisfies all the conditions of the riddle as posted in the OP. This is what I asserted back in post 79: that we have offered a valid solution.
By the way, to invalidate another answer by saying ‘please use your common sense’ is illegitimate. The given answer satisfies the conditions of the riddle as stated in the OP, which was the point under discussion. What you happen to think constitutes common sense is utterly irrelevant because (a) ‘common sense’ can be subjective, and (b) the answers to riddles often have nothing to do with common sense and are intentionally counter-intuitive or hinge on unusual interpretations of common words, concepts or conditions.
I stand by my prediction in post #20. Whatever answer your friend has for this riddle, it will be totally arbitrary. Go to your friend right now and demand the answer. Come back when he gives it to you. None of us will be satisfied with the answer he gives and most of us will be able to come up with a better answer.