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        riddles >> medium >> Secret Service
        
(Message started by: mack knife on Sep 11^th, 2002, 2:53pm)

Title: Secret Service
Post by mack knife on Sep 11^th, 2002, 2:53pm

As taken from http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/manchurian.htm

Assume you are the head of the Secret Service and the President is about to arrive in Europe, where he will spend Monday in Lisbon, Tuesday in Madrid, Wednesday in Rome, Thursday in Prague and Friday in Paris. But just before he departs on Sunday night, you received intelligence from a source that an assassin plans to attempt to assassinate the President on one of those five days in one of those five cities. You further are told that you will not know which day or which city before the President arrives in that city on that day.

Assuming the information is accurate, can any of these cities be logically ruled out as the possible place of the attack? If so, which one(s) are safe for the President to visit?

Title: Re: New puzzle: Secret Service
Post by S. Owen on Sep 11^th, 2002, 4:10pm

Ah, the "Pop Quiz" riddle has returned in a different outfit! There is a thread around here somewhere on a very similar problem. I think I like the wording here a little better, if only because it says "you will not know" rather than something about a quiz "surprising" some students. The small difference is itself interesting to debate, but minus that, there is still a difficult problem at hand.

I have heard statements of the problem that say something like "you will not be able to logically deduce..." which I think further crystallizes the real essence of the problem.

Title: Re: New puzzle: Secret Service
Post by Jeremy on Sep 13^th, 2002, 11:29am

ack, so what's the answer? my head hurts... do the assassins give the pop quiz to president bush on tuesday?

Title: Re: New puzzle: Secret Service
Post by anonymous on Oct 12^th, 2002, 11:14am

hmph

Title: Re: New puzzle: Secret Service
Post by icon on Nov 2^nd, 2002, 4:31pm

it was disected for weeks over in other forum with pretty similar problem

basically idea is to assume that it cant be friday because if it didnt happen by thursday then friday would be obvious so president would be hidden

using that logical u can say same about every other day(ie if it didnt happen by wednesday night then you can say that it will happen on thursday since if it wouldnt then it cant happen since friday would be ruled out...)

i guess this 1 is worded much nicely since other riddle was about suprise quit which could have been given on friday since then if it wasnt given by thursday it could have been given on friday hence being sorta suprise its in own(bleh we can argue about it for years its sort like a paradox)