Pick a Box

The Fair Maiden Susan wishes to wed. And her father, the Evil King Berman, has devised a way to drive off suitors. He has a little quiz for them, and here it is. It’s very simple. There are three boxes on the table. One is made of gold, one is made of silver and the third is made of lead. Inside one of these boxes is a picture of the fair Susan. It is the job of the White Knight to figure out which one has her picture. Now, to assist him in this endeavor there is an inscription on each of the boxes. The gold box says, “Susan’s picture is in this box.” The silver box says, “The picture is not in this box.” The lead box says, “The picture is not in the gold box.” Only one of the statements is true.

So the question is: Where’s the picture?

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Rool

December 15, 2009 at 10:28 AM

The long way would be to try putting the picture in each box and see which one would make the condition, “Only one of the statements is true”, true. (Assuming it is true itself by the way)

But let’s try to do this in a shorter way:

– If the Picture is in the gold box, both statements on the GOLD and SILVER boxes would be true. Hence not in the gold box!

– Since it is not in the gold box, This would make the LEAD box statement true (and the only true one), therefore both the GOLD and SILVER boxes have wrong statements on them.

– More particularly, the SILVER statement ““The picture is not in this box” would be wrong

– So if I were the white knight, I would open the SILVER box and marry the Fair Maiden Susan!

The new much bigger question would be: Do I really want to marry her? But that’s another story altogether. Let me first discuss this with my girlfriend and I’ll keep you posted :)