CSE Festival 2018

Intra-University Logic-Puzzle Olympiad

1 hour and 30 minutes

Welcome to CSE Fest 2018 Intra-Varsity Logic Puzzle Olympiad. For the next one and a
half hour, you’ll be trying to solve a total of ten problems that will test your deductive
reasoning skills.

We hope you have fun. Good luck!

1. Let’s warm up with some syllogistic logic problems.

• If all Uns are Luns and some Duns are Uns, which of the following statements must be true? (2
points)
X : All Uns are Duns.
Y : Some Luns are Duns.
Z : Some Uns are not Duns.
Note that it is possible that none of these statements is true.
• “This man can’t succeed because he is not truthful.”
If the above statement is true, which of the following statements must be true as well? (1 point)
X : All truthful persons succeed.
Y : Only successful persons are truthful.
Note that it is possible that both or none of the statements are true.
• Take a look at the following statements.
X : All Kaas are Khaas.
Y : All Kaas are Gaas.
Z : No Khaas are Gaas.
If both X and Y are true, is it ever possible for Z to be true as well? Explain. (4 points)
2. I occasionally play rock-paper-scissors with my friend to settle matters. Yesterday I played her ten times.
• I used three rocks, six scissors and one paper, not necessarily in that order.
• She used two rocks, four scissors and four papers, again not necessarily in that order.
• As rare as it may seem, none of the ten games we played ended in draws.
 Your job is to find out who won at the end. Did I win? Did my friend win? What was the final score?
(5 points)
(Note: In a rock-paper-scissors game two players each chooses one of rock, paper and scissors. If both
pick the same, the game is drawn. Otherwise, Rock beats Scissors, Scissors beat Paper, Paper beats
Rock.)

3. You come across two identical boxes, each with an inscription engraved on its lid. The inscription on the
first box says, “Exactly one of the two inscriptions are true.” The inscription on the second box says,
“The treasure is in this box.”
Given that exactly one of the boxes contains the treasure, is it possible for you to determine which box
has the treasure without opening any of them? (6 points)
(Warning: try not to make any unwarranted assumptions about the truth values of the inscriptions.)
4. A row of 2018 coins is laid out on a table. Bristy and Saquib are playing a game in which the aim is to
gather the most money by picking the coins off one at a time. However, they are only allowed to pick
the coins that are at either ends of the row. All the coins have integral values and the sum of the values
of all the coins is odd.
Bristy starts. She picks a coin off one of the end and pockets it. Then Saquib does the same. They
continue until there are no coins left.
Who has a winning strategy? Explain. (7 points)
5. Make three identical squares using four sticks of length 2 and two sticks of length 1. (3 points)
(You’re allowed to cross the sticks. You are, however, not allowed to break them.)
6. Kleene rolls two tetrahedral fair dice. Each die has its four faces labelled: 1, 2, 3, and 4. He tells Carroll
the sum of the outcomes, and tells Kurt the product. He then asks them to guess the numbers he got.
Then Carroll and Kurt have the following conversation:

Carroll: Do you know what the numbers are?

Kurt: No, do you?
Carroll: At first I didn’t, but I do now!
Kurt: I still don’t get it.
Carroll: I’ll give you a hint. We both heard different numbers.
Kurt: Oh!

What were the two numbers that Kleene got? (6 points)

(A tetrahedral die is a die with four sides. Assume that Carroll and Kurt are perfectly rational.)
7. You have a list of infinitely many sentences on an infinitely long piece of paper. The sentences are all
the same and they read, “At least one of the sentences below this is false”.
How many of these sentences are true? How many are false? (5 points)
8. Eight runners take part in a race. Two of them are wearing red shirts, two of them are wearing blue
shirts, two of them are wearing green shirts and two of them are wearing yellow shirts. At the finish
line, you have the following configuration:

• There is one runner in between the red pair.

• There are two runners in between the blue pair.
• There are three runners in between the green pair.
• There are four runners in between the yellow pair.

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 • The last runner is wearing a yellow shirt.
Can you rank the runners in terms of the color of the shirt they are wearing? (4 points)
(If multiple possible rankings can be inferred from the information above, list all of them.)
9. On a table, you see four cards placed in a row. The first card is showing an A on its face. The second
card is showing a B on its face. The third card is showing a 1 one its face. And the fourth card is
showing a 2 on its face.
You already know that each of these four cards has a letter on one side and a number on the other.
However, that’s all you know.
Someone walks up to you and says, “All cards with a vowel on one side have an odd number on the other
side.”
To check whether or not this person is lying, you decide to turn over some of the cards. What is the
minimum number of cards that you need to turn over? What are these cards? (3 points)
10. One hundred prisoners have been newly ushered into prison. The warden tells them that starting
tomorrow, each of them will be placed in an isolated cell, unable to communicate amongst each other.
Each day, the warden will choose one of the prisoners uniformly at random with replacement, and place
him in a central interrogation room containing only a light bulb with a toggle switch. The prisoner will
be able to observe the current state of the light bulb. If he wishes, he can toggle the light bulb. He also
has the option of announcing that he believes all prisoners have visited the interrogation room at some
point in time. If this announcement is true, then all prisoners are set free, but if it is false, all prisoners
are executed. The warden leaves, and the prisoners huddle together to discuss their fate. Can they agree
on a protocol that will guarantee their freedom? Assume that the light bulb was initially off. (10 points,
bonus points up for grabs)
(Note that this is an open-ended question and therefore can have multiple correct answers. Any correct
answer will bag you the ten points. However, if you want to claim bonus points, do an expected running
time analysis of your protocol. The better the asymptotic behavior of your protocol, the more points you
get.)

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