Very hard logic puzzle

SolarWind

:up:

Philosophim

OP, a logic puzzle should only have one solution. The way you've typed this, there is more than one solution, period. This means it is not a logic puzzle. Go back and carefully re-read your problem. If you got it from somewhere else, then make sure its accurately reposted. If you made this up yourself, it is either not conveying accurately what is intended, or you made a mistake in your formulation.

Let me point out a few flawed specifics.

First, there are only 3 questions, not four. You say "the answer" would be abc. The answer to what? Clearly state what the fourth question is for this answer. Is the fourth question, "What is the non-spaced answer to all three questions?"

Next, the other three questions need clearer reference. What is "this"? Is this intended to be the answer to the fourth question? So if I typed 1 for the first question, its the first number I will type to answer question four? Or is "this" in refence to the question itself, in which case it would be any number I chose.

Please look at this again and amend it to be clear, and ensure there can only be one solution.

pfirefry

333 — pfirefry

This is the only “logical” answer. First, we type 3 to answer the second question, then we type 3 to answer the first question, and then we type 3 to answer the first question.

Here is a more detailed breakdown.

Reveal

What is the third character (number, letter, or symbol) you will type to solve this?

How many different characters will you type to solve this?

What is the first character you will type to solve this? — DavidJohnson

We start with three questions. We don't know the answers yet. I'll use the character '?' to mark unknown answers.

???

Q1. The answer is unclear
Q2. The answer is 3. There are three questions, and three characters to answer them
Q3. The answer is unclear

The only question we can answer right know is Q2. Let's go ahead and type the answer to it. According to the question, '3' is a valid character (number, letter, or symbol).

?3?

Q1. The answer is unclear
Q2. The answer is 3
Q3. The first character that we typed to solve this was 3

Now we have an answer to the question Q3. Let's go ahead and type it.

?33

Q1. We know that answer to Q3 is 3. If we typed them in order 1-2-3, we would type it the last
Q2. The answer is 3
Q3. The answer is 3

Now we know the answer to Q1. It's 3.

Let's double-check. The proposed answer is 333. First, we typed 3, then we typed 3, and then we typed 3.

Q1. What is the third character (number, letter, or symbol) you will type to solve this? - 3
Q2. How many different characters will you type to solve this? - 3
Q3. What is the first character you will type to solve this? - 3

Everything matches. The puzzle is solved.

tim wood

↪pfirefry

Except that the answer to Q2 is now 1. Hmmm.

pfirefry

↪tim wood

Ah, it says "different". Good catch. Back to the drawing board.

DavidJohnson

↪Philosophim

The questions were part of an old online puzzle game. The website's no longer up but I've saved the original pages and translated these three questions as best as I can to work in a stand-alone setting. Maybe I should upload the previous pages/puzzles so people have more context and are better able to lock-in a solution. I doubt it will help but who knows.

Cuthbert

Even the right answers are wrong for no reason and for all I know the wrong answers are right. This puzzle is too much like real life.

Hanover

↪DavidJohnson

How about just posting the solution at this point so that we can see if the solution provided is truly the only answer entailed by the question?

Hanover

Man. Wtf? I felt awkward reading this. It was a damn strange post. — dimosthenis9

Tnx!

TonesInDeepFreeze

noneplussevenn

I wrote

n
oneplusseven
n

first character = n
third character = n
different characters = eight = one plus seven

Cuthbert

Perhaps the puzzle was a psychology experiment given to unsuspecting students in 1956 to determine whether they were undercover communists. I can think of no other solution.

Philosophim

The website's no longer up but I've saved the original pages and translated these three questions as best as I can to work in a stand-alone setting. Maybe I should upload the previous pages/puzzles so people have more context and are better able to lock-in a solution. I doubt it will help but who knows. — DavidJohnson

It might. Its really appreciated that you want to give us a nice logic puzzle, I just think something is missing.

DavidJohnson

↪Philosophim

I just changed the original post so everyone can see what the pages used to look like.

TonesInDeepFreeze

↪DavidJohnson

What is not correct here?:

noneplussevenn

I wrote

n
oneplusseven
n

first character = n
third character = n
different characters = eight = one plus seven

pfirefry

How many different characters will you type to go to <3> from here? — DavidJohnson

Does “different” mean “unique” here? Would aaa count as 1 or 3 characters?

TonesInDeepFreeze

↪pfirefry

1

DavidJohnson

↪pfirefry

Distinct. aaa would count as 1 and not 3.

pfirefry

ofouro — sime

↪sime The smartest answer by far but something is still being missed. — DavidJohnson

“ufourf”, perhaps?

TonesInDeepFreeze

ufour — pfirefry

The third character is 'o' not 'u'.

TonesInDeepFreeze

It's a good thing that whoever determined the solution to this puzzle is not among the referees of the P v NP contest. Someone would give a correct solution and the referees would say, "Sorry no million dollars, not even a cigar, it's not what we had in mind."

Philosophim

Ok, I'll take a stab at it now. Knowing a little bit about how urls work, I would make this guess.

/2/

Why?

The previous url is still in there. It specifically states, "to go to <3> from HERE. The way a url structure works is every page has an address, and because this is an old website, we can conclude it is not a single page application. As such, each / divides the location.

So taking the previous answer of /r17h, your first character would need to be a /. Questions 1 and 3 necessitate they are the same character. That leaves 2 as the only answer for the number of distinct characters. The final url would then be /r17h/2/

Is this correct?

TonesInDeepFreeze

↪Philosophim

It can't have anything to do with URLs, because the original post, before it was edited, described the puzzle without mentioning URLs and supposedly solvable by "pure logic alone"..

Philosophim

It can't have anything to do with URLs, because the original post, before it was edited, described the puzzle without mentioning URLs. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Unless of course the OP missed that point. They'll let me know soon enough.

TonesInDeepFreeze

He would be tarred and feathered if he left that out though it's relevant. He wouldn't have.

DavidJohnson

↪Philosophim

The forward slash is already there so there's no reason to delete it and then re-type it. The previous answer wasn't "/r17h". It's just "r17h".

DavidJohnson

↪TonesInDeepFreeze

Well there's always the possibility that I did leave something out that prevented people from finding the solution originally (which is why I re-uploaded the original post) but it's definitely not related to a forward slash, haha.

TonesInDeepFreeze

↪DavidJohnson

So you contend that previous answers, though correct, do not suffice because they have variations, while the desired answer has no variations, and that there is a "clue" that has been missed.

In what line of your edited version is the clue?

Philosophim

The forward slash is already there so there's no reason to delete it and then re-type it. The previous answer wasn't "/r17h". It's just "r17h". — DavidJohnson

Just to be clear, I'm not stating to delete and retype the /. The .com/ is still there, as well as the r17h. Because it states "from here", I'm assuming nothing is deleted. Thus r17h/2/. But, you've noted there is no / in the answer, so that eliminates that.

That does mean that it will be r17hsomethingElseHere without a /. I'll think on it some more.

DavidJohnson

↪TonesInDeepFreeze

That's not what I'm saying. There's only been one correct answer this whole time but it may have been impossible to find it before for whatever reason. I think it's been possible to solve this whole time but for the benefit of the readers I've included the original pages for context just in case it helps.

It's like if someone asked, "what is 1+1?". The answers, "it's an even number" or "it' >1" are true but not the actual answer, "2".

DavidJohnson

↪Philosophim

The previous answers aren't included in the new URL. So if the previous URL was "funpuzzlegames.com/answerstopage1" then the next URL would be "funpuzzlegames.com/answerstopage2" and not "funpuzzlegames.om/answerstopage1answerstopage2".

Very hard logic puzzle

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