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Today’s Brain Game isn’t a trick; just logic. Enjoy!
Identical twin brothers Jed and Zed – both completely blind – preferred to dress alike. One day, they entered a clothing store. With a salesperson’s help, each of them purchased three pair of socks; one white pair, one brown pair, and one black pair. The socks were identical in style and size, and each pair was bundled separately with the same type of plastic ring. Each man put his receipt in his pocket, placed his three pairs of socks under his arm, and stood out front at the bus stop to catch a ride.
A large truck blew his horn right in front of Zed, startling him. He bumped into Jed, and they dropped the bundles of socks on the sidewalk. The twins managed to reach down and find all six of the bundles intact, but they had no idea what color each bundle was. Still, before the bus arrived – and without any outside assistance - the men had sorted the socks so that each of them had one white pair, one brown pair, and one black pair. They caught the #11 bus and headed home.
Since the twins couldn’t see, and the socks felt identical to them,
how did Jed and Zed ensure that they’d sorted the socks correctly?
Comments (8)
Comment
- Follow mental_floss
that’s an easy way of ensuring that you don’t wear the same coloured socks to work tomorrow
posted by kvn on 6-18-2009 at 8:00 am
not as elegant a solution, but since they both tucked the socks under their arms, they could have determined by scent. I assume that having spent a lifetime together, they would each recognize the other’s BO.
posted by kindofgross on 6-18-2009 at 9:34 am
Going for extra credit here…if it were a sunny day they could lay the socks out for a couple minutes, then feel them. The white socks would be coolest, brown warm and black pretty darned hot.
Under Sandy’s original solution, we’ve only ensured that they take home an identical collection of 6 socks/3 colors, but it’s not likely that any of them would actually be pairs of matched socks.
posted by Chan on 6-18-2009 at 9:54 am
I thought the same thing as Chan…
posted by Kevin on 6-18-2009 at 11:00 am
I got it right, but as pointed out before, this solves only the logic problem, not the real life problem.
posted by Zach on 6-18-2009 at 11:34 am
The question is definitely misleading. The phrase “each of them had one white pair, one brown pair, and one black pair” implies that the colors were all paired correctly together. However, the solution only provides that each brother has six socks made up of the 3 colors in sets of 2…not that the colors are correctly paired.
posted by Phil on 6-18-2009 at 11:49 am
Maybe I’m wrong here but it seems that the solution is wrong. Say Jed picked up two brown and one white and Ned picked up two black and one white and they inadvertantly trade the pair of white socks to each other or Jed trades a brown for a white?
posted by Cooper Del Honda on 6-18-2009 at 4:06 pm
No, the solution is correct, they each give one sock from each sock pair to the brother. So in cooper’s example Jed would give two brown socks and one white to Ned in exchange for two black and one white.
posted by Jerad on 6-18-2009 at 7:11 pm