/tg/Station 13

ok here's the question

a guy owns a shop. he has $100 stolen from him. the thief then comes back to the shop and buys $70 worth of goods from the shop owner, paying with the $100 he stole. the shop owner gives the man $30 in change.

how much money did the shopkeeper lose overall?

please help

$100

the purchase is a red herring

The purchase and the change are irrelevant with the information given. Dude lost $100.

$100 loss

Even returning the $100, the shopkeeper effectively lost $70 in goods and another $30 in fiat due to giving the thief change.

You are a servant in a palace. The palace is in the shape of a circle, and you do not know how many rooms there are in the palace.

Some of the rooms have the lights on, some have the lights off. Your job is to turn all the lights off. I remind you again that the palace is ring shaped, and you do not know how many rooms there are in the palace.

How would you turn off all the lights, and in the end inform your superior (via your cell phone) that you have completed your job?

pubby wrote:You are a servant in a palace. The palace is in the shape of a circle, and you do not know how many rooms there are in the palace.

Some of the rooms have the lights on, some have the lights off. Your job is to turn all the lights off. I remind you again that the palace is ring shaped, and you do not know how many rooms there are in the palace.

How would you turn off all the lights, and in the end inform your superior (via your cell phone) that you have completed your job?

Assuming it's not possible to mark rooms in any way other than using the lights, I'd do it like this.

First go round the palace in a clockwise fashion, entering each room and adding it to your count. In the first room you go to, turn the lights on, if they are already - leave them on. After doing that, continue on checking each room. If the room's light is off, add it to the count and continue on. If it's on, turn it off , add it to the count and keep going. Keep doing this until you feel satisfied and start going back, counterclockwise and counting down each room you passed. Once you reach the first room you started in, according to your count, and its lights are off, then you can be sure that you made a complete circle and checked every room.

if its lights are still on, leave them on and head on back to the room you started the countdown from and keep going until you feel satisfied again.

pubby wrote:You are a servant in a palace. The palace is in the shape of a circle, and you do not know how many rooms there are in the palace.

Some of the rooms have the lights on, some have the lights off. Your job is to turn all the lights off. I remind you again that the palace is ring shaped, and you do not know how many rooms there are in the palace.

How would you turn off all the lights, and in the end inform your superior (via your cell phone) that you have completed your job?

Is this even properly solvable assuming no loopholes and that the number of rooms is potentially infinite? Any number of patterns of any amount of complexity will eventually naturally occur within an infinite system
That said, take a fat dump in the first room u go in now you know where to stop when you come around

Insufficient information how much the shop owner paid originally for the $70 dollars worth of goods bought is missing. I mean shops have profit margins on how much they can resell product for this is just sensible.

Also did he have any insurance?

pubby wrote:You are a servant in a palace. The palace is in the shape of a circle, and you do not know how many rooms there are in the palace.

Some of the rooms have the lights on, some have the lights off. Your job is to turn all the lights off. I remind you again that the palace is ring shaped, and you do not know how many rooms there are in the palace.

How would you turn off all the lights, and in the end inform your superior (via your cell phone) that you have completed your job?

assuming that "shape of a circle" means "minimal side corridors and all rooms are on or right next to that circle"
drop the mobile phone
go around turning out all the lights
keep going
when you find your mobile phone again, ring up your boss

Leave for the night and tell him the morning servant turned the lights on

You are a prisoner in a room with 2 doors and 2 guards. One of the doors will guide you to freedom and behind the other is a hangman --you don't know which is which.

One of the guards always tells the truth and the other always lies. You don't know which one is the truth-teller or the liar either.

You have to choose and open one of these doors, but you can only ask a single question to one of the guards.

What do you ask so you can pick the door to freedom?

pubby wrote:You are a prisoner in a room with 2 doors and 2 guards. One of the doors will guide you to freedom and behind the other is a hangman --you don't know which is which.

One of the guards always tells the truth and the other always lies. You don't know which one is the truth-teller or the liar either.

You have to choose and open one of these doors, but you can only ask a single question to one of the guards.

What do you ask so you can pick the door to freedom?

I would ask one of the guards, it doesn't matter which, the following question: "If I asked the other guard which door led to freedom, to which would he say it was?"
After hearing his answer, I choose the opposite of what they say.

It's actually simple, if a bit confusing sounding at first and I find it easier to understand if you break it up into scenarios.
Scenario A: You are talking to the guard who tells the truth and ask them the question. The guard who tells the truth knows that the guard who tells lies would answer the question by pointing at the one leading to death, and so, he points to the death door.
Scenario B: You are talking to the guard who tells lies and ask them the question. The guard who tells lies knows that the guard who tells the truth would answer that question honestly and point to the actual door leading to freedom. Knowing this, the liar guard points to the death door instead as he must always lie about his answers.

Since they always point to the death door, you can safely choose the remaining door as the correct option.

CosmicScientist wrote:>beaten by the rabbit
GO TO BED

No, I like logical problems and human decision-making. It fascinates me.

I've got one my own:

Alice, Bob and Charlie have kidnapped and poisoned, their kidnapper however has a twisted sense of fairness and a fondness for puzzles and tells them that he will give them a crate containing boxes of the antidote, and 7 fake antidote boxes, labelled alphabetically from A-H. The group may only select one of the possible antidotes, once the selection has been made - all the other antidotes will destroy themselves. To give you all a chance, the kidnapper has placed a very small sample of each antidote on top of their respective boxes and tells you that the real antidote will cause your tongue to go numb after 3 minutes. He then informs you that you only have 5 more minutes to live.

What system can you employ to reliably find the real antidote and save your lives in time?

Theoretically you don't even need 3 people to solve that one assuming there's a time tracker available (if there's not then the other two people can time keep). Just drink one sample every 10 seconds, drinking the first one at 0 seconds. Once the 3 minute mark hits, if you feel numb, it's the first one you drank. If you instead feel numb 10 seconds later, it's the second one you drank. If you instead feel numb 10 seconds later, etc.
Even if the correct vial is the eighth one, you'd still feel numb and instantly know the antidote with 50 seconds to spare

Curious what solution you had in mind

PKPenguin321 wrote:Theoretically you don't even need 3 people to solve that one assuming there's a time tracker available (if there's not then the other two people can time keep). Just drink one sample every 10 seconds, drinking the first one at 0 seconds. Once the 3 minute mark hits, if you feel numb, it's the first one you drank. If you instead feel numb 10 seconds later, it's the second one you drank. If you instead feel numb 10 seconds later, etc.
Even if the correct vial is the eighth one, you'd still feel numb and instantly know the antidote with 50 seconds to spare

Curious what solution you had in mind

That would be fine if the numbness is exact, not saying it isn't but it's possible.

The solution I had in mind is binary logic.
Since you have three people and eight antidotes, you can assign each antidote a unique three digit number using binary in the following order:-
A=000
B=001
C=010
D=011
E=100
F=101
G=110
H=111
Next, you assign each person a column and have them sample antidotes where their column is "1".
So, let's say, Alice is the first column. She'll sample B, D, F and H.
Bob is the second column, he samples: C, D, G and H
Charlie is the last column, and so he will sample: E, F, G and H.
After the three minute mark, you ask whose tongue is numb.

If nobody's tongue is numb, the antidote is A.
If only Alice's tongue is numb, the antidote is B.
If only Bob's tongue is numb, the antidote is C.
If only Charlie's tongue is numb, the antidote is E.
If only Alice and Bob's tongues are numb, the antidote is D.
If only Alice and Charlie's tongues are numb, the antidote is F.
If only Bob and Charlie's tongues are numb, the antidote is G.
If everyone's tongue is numb, the antidote is H.

Nice, that's way more elegant. Tighten up the prompt a bit and you'll be good. I'd give them only 3 minutes and 30 seconds to live, and specify that the numbness has a 5 second margin of error instead of being at exactly the 3 minute mark. That would clean up most brute force solutions like mine

pubby wrote:You are a prisoner in a room with 2 doors and 2 guards. One of the doors will guide you to freedom and behind the other is a hangman --you don't know which is which.

One of the guards always tells the truth and the other always lies. You don't know which one is the truth-teller or the liar either.

You have to choose and open one of these doors, but you can only ask a single question to one of the guards.

What do you ask so you can pick the door to freedom?

walk through a random one, say hi to the hangman if he's there since you didn't specify that he was there specifically to execute me
I assume he's on lunch break or something