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Maybe I'm missing something, but the "hard" part of this problem is figuring on the trick. Once you know that, it becomes relatively easy – and you can't use a program to figure out the trick.
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Which part is the trick? It all seems very straightforward to me.
Its understanding what the question actually means when it says things like 'Bernard: At first I don't know when Cheryl's birthday is, but I know now.' ... this is actually a cryptic coding of the rules of the puzzle. If you properly understand those rules and convert them to code (as in the OP) then searching the possible answers for a match is trivial.
Maybe I'm missing something, but the "hard" part of this problem is figuring on the trick. Once you know that, it becomes relatively easy – and you can't use a program to figure out the trick.
I don't know, can code like this reason about knowledge-about-knowledge in general? For example, can a version of the code be used to solve the 'hardest puzzle' - https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html (solution: https://xkcd.com/solution.html ) ?
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It's relatively simple, if you're the kind of person who grasps that 1+1*0 is not 0 under most parsers and under the order of operations implied by e.g. the vector space axioms...
> under the order of operations implied by e.g. the vector space axioms What, exactly, about vector spaces implies an order of operations?
(For those who don't get the reference, every so often some variant of "a + b * 0 + c = ?" will show up in the public's attention and receive very emotional arguments about how it must be 0, or must be a+c, or must be c, or it must be ambiguous and therefore undefined. Similarly to the logic puzzle programmers can just point to the problem expressed in Python for the correct answer...)
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Why do you say that is cryptic? I can't think of a clearer or plainer way to express that fact.
For outsiders, there are two elements to the puzzle: the encoding of the logic problem and the logic problem itself. People might very well be able to solve even fairly complex logic problems without having been exposed to this tradition of encoding such problems. The problem is stated as three persons having an odd, but casual conversation. To outsider that's all they're doing and to those the problem is impenetrabl…
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Let's consider the question: 1. "Why did Albert speak first?" Before we answer this, we need to develop a set of assumptions to operate under. Given the synthetic nature of the problem, we might assume that both Albert and Bernard are of equal ability, and able to make logical inferences based on reasonable assumptions. We'll also assume that both Albert and Bernard are only going to announce the binary state of each…
> Lastly, we'll assume that whoever can deduce the binary state of certainty first, will speak first. The speed at which they come to their conclusions, and who speaks first is meaningless. I think perhaps if you are taking them into account then you are trying to come up with a completely different problem, or intentionally being disingenuous. Given the context (that this is a question on a high school test), it is…
That's your own assumption. And that's a perfectly fine assumption to make, but not a universally chosen one.
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On the contrary, there are many unspoken things one must assume to solve this puzzle "correctly"; that Albert and Bernard are rational, honest, cooperating, and have a certain penchant for communicating novel inferences they make instead of just blurting out "we don't know" out of boredom, laziness, or frustration.
To me, all those things are very readily inferred from the fact that the problem is being posed as a logic puzzle.
Because of this, solutions are often not logical.
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Why do you suspect the crypticness of the puzzle's language is the problem, rather than the fact that a large portion of people haven't studied basic logic and are thus unable to complete basic logic puzzles?
It's not just a basic logic problem - it's a language translation into a logic problem problem. You have to 'get' that is what you're dealing with. Incidentally, I get a similar feeling from these puzzles that I get from code questions or examples where every variable or function is named 'a' or 'b' or 'foo' or 'bar'. (aaand I just had a mini-epiphany of sorts that when I see those types of programming puzzles I shou…
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For outsiders, there are two elements to the puzzle: the encoding of the logic problem and the logic problem itself. People might very well be able to solve even fairly complex logic problems without having been exposed to this tradition of encoding such problems. The problem is stated as three persons having an odd, but casual conversation. To outsider that's all they're doing and to those the problem is impenetrabl…
This is exactly why I find these kinds of puzzles infuriating. It always hinges on some contrived, bullshit "trick" which has nothing to do with solving real problems.
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Its understanding what the question actually means when it says things like 'Bernard: At first I don't know when Cheryl's birthday is, but I know now.' ... this is actually a cryptic coding of the rules of the puzzle. If you properly understand those rules and convert them to code (as in the OP) then searching the possible answers for a match is trivial.
I think one of the things that trips people up with puzzles like this (including the one mentioned in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9437483 ) is that knowledge of lack of information is itself information , a point that isn't used very often; if someone tells you they don't know something, you are likely to see it as simply a lack of knowledge, and not as a piece of information that could be combined with the…