Sandy Wood
Brain Game: Jed & Zed Need Socks
by Sandy Wood - June 18, 2009 - 7:30 AM

THE ANSWER:

Each twin took three bundles, and gave one sock from each bundle to his brother. No matter which three bundles each twin had originally, the swapping would ensure that Jed and Zed each ended up with one pair of white socks, one pair of brown socks, and one pair of black socks.

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Comments (8)

  1. 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

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. I thought the same thing as Chan…

    posted by Kevin on 6-18-2009 at 11:00 am

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. 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

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