Logic
Before continuing, the reader should acquaint himself with Philip’s explanation of the basic form of the Monty Hall problem, as shown in this YouTube video: Intro I just had a very interesting email exchange with a reader named Johan who had some excellent questions about Monty Python-esque probability puzzles. The questions he brought up were [...]
Continue reading about The Monty Hall Problem Revisited: Delving Deeper
My friend and I were playing chess the other day, and while he was admiring some birds in the park I pulled a fast one and stuck one of my pieces back on the board. Unfortunately, my new-found criminal career was doomed from the start, for he quickly noticed my deception. “Did you see me [...]
This is an analysis of my game versus International Master Dean Ippolito during his 16-game simultaneous exhibition at the Marshall Chess Club in New York City. Please don’t laugh at how badly I got beaten! 1. Nf3 Nf6 2. d4 d5 3. c4 c6 4. Nc3 Bf5 5. cxd5 cxd5 6. Qb3 b6 7. Bf4 [...]
Continue reading about Chess: IM Dean Ippolito (2544) vs Me (1552), simul
Today’s post is going to be a riddle; I figured it was about time for another one. You and I both have envelopes filled with money. My envelope contains either double or half the amount of money that’s in yours. If you want, I’m going to let you switch envelopes. Should you stay, switch, or [...]
I figure what with all the riddles I’ve been giving that now is a good time to go over this. According to Wikipedia, the two incompleteness theorems can be summarized as follows: “We can never find an all-encompassing axiomatic system which is able to prove all mathematical truths, but no falsehoods.” “If an axiomatic system [...]
Continue reading about Gödel’s Proof Does Not Ruin The Credibility Of Math
I will give you $1 million to answer a yes or no question either truthfully or falsely. Would you take me up on this offer? Please use rot13 to encode your answers so as not to ruin the puzzle for anybody else.
Continue reading about Raymond Smullyan: I Will Give You $1 Million
I’m posting all these puzzles because Yat said he thought that logic puzzles are becoming stale, and I’m trying to prove him otherwise. There are two types of inhabitants in the world: humans and vampires. Humans always tell the truth and vampires always lie. Also, inhabitants can either be sane or insane. Someone who is [...]
Since my other Raymond Smullyan puzzle was so popular, I’m adding another one. As always, you can find his riddles in his books in much greater depth. A perfect logician goes to visit the island of knights and knaves. Knights always tell the truth and knaves always lie. There is no one else on the [...]
Continue reading about Raymond Smullyan: The Logician Who Couldn’t (Knights and Knaves)
It’s from Raymond Smullyan’s book The Lady or the Tiger and in my opinion it is the best logic puzzle ever written. You want to buy a truth machine. They are machines that have two lights, red and green, and truthfully answer any yes or no question. The truth machine store has three machines in [...]
Continue reading about The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever: The Broken Truth Machine by Raymond Smullyan
Does absolute truth exist or not? There are clearly some subjective things in the world, such as what’s the best movie, who’s the hottest girl, and whether or not Fox is a good network. But, are there any truly objective truths? Yes, yes there are. In fact, there are more than you may realize. A [...]
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