"I am so smart! I am so smart! S-M-R-T! I mean, S-M-A-R-T!"

the surrounding story smacked of urban legend, but the puzzle was pretty darn hard. that's the sort of question they ask on the LSAT and the GRE's analytical section (both of which I scored highest on). so... yeah. I'm so smart

</brag>

quote:

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Originally posted by ZorroTheFox:
funny, as soon as I clickecd on that link, a trojan horse attempt was made on My computer. I hope that was only a kwinkydink.......Z

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Sub7, most likely.

The newly organized Layton City Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Center had hired four specialists -- Doctors Morton, Carlton, Stanton and Kinston. Each doctor was renowned in his particular field. One was an eye specialist; one an ear specialist; one, a nose specialist; and one, a throat specialist. Each man had come to the Center from one of the four other local hospitals: Northside, Southside, Eastside and Westside. Given the clues below, determine each doctor's name (first names: Thomas, Albert, Gary and Marvin), his specialty and the hospital where he previously practiced.

1. Dr. Carlton and Gary and the man from Westside Hospital were natives of Layton City.

2. The ear specialist had never worked at Southside Hospital.

3. Neither Dr. Stanton nor Gary nor the Throat specialist had ever practiced at Eastside Hospital.

4. Dr. Carlton was not the ear specialist.

5. Albert had never practiced at Eastside or Westside.

6. Dr Morton and the man from Northside Hospital were avid tennis fans.

7. The ear specialist and Marvin had their offices and staff on the first floor of the Center. Dr. Stanton and the nose specialist were on the second floor.

I couldn't imagine doing it without pen/paper. I use the matrix approach to this kind of problem -- in this case, a 5x5 upper triangular matrix, with a 5x5 grid in each of the sections. It probably took me at least 3 minutes just to draw the lines!

One nitpick on the puzzle statement, though: it says the Norwegian lives in the "first" house, but all other references to house ordering use "left/right". So you have to know whether the first house is leftmost, or rightmost. Since the puzzle is in English, which is read left->right, I guessed that "first" meant "leftmost", and it turns out I was correct.

For those people still wrestling with it, try solving the puzzle in the following number order.

9, 14, 8, 4, 5, 1, 7, 11.
12 & 15 simultaneously.
2, 3, 6, 13, 10 should then fall right into place.

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CrawGator

A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. Douglas Adams Mostly Harmless

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Through out your life you will wonder who THEY are. Then you find out who THEY really are. From then on you live you life in fear of THEM and you wish you never knew who THEY were.

The rest of them fall into place because they will only fit in place one way after you solve 12 and 15.

At least that is the way I did it.

Note to quantumfluff: I am emailing you my solution to your puzzle. Let me know if I got it right. I don't want to spoil it for the rest of the forum.

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CrawGator

A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. Douglas Adams Mostly Harmless

Actually, the line of reasoning I used was this: one row of my matrix (chosen pretty much arbitrarily) had two possible choices. Assume one of them is true. Go through the rest of the puzzle with this assumption and write "1" in the corner of each square that is forced true under our assumption. The puzzle solved itself from that point with no contradictions.

Now, assume the other choice is true. Go through the puzzle as before... and eventually I hit a matrix row which was forced true regardless of whether I used assumption #1 or #2. So that one had to be true "for real". And I was able to solve the rest of the puzzle from that (it turned out that assumption #1 was indeed true; once I had that, I already had the puzzle, since I'd already worked out the matrix from that point).

I'm surprised this puzzle never shows up on the web. The first time I saw it was in the very early '70s. I did not see the Einstein puzzle (with different names for everything, until abou 1975).

You have 12 coins that all appear identical, but one (and only one) is actually a fake, made of a material that is a different weight then the real coins.

You have the use of a balance that can compare two piles of coins.

Anyhow, your 4 doctor puzzle was a real challange. I found a logical pattern to it without making any guesses. You can't pick it apart like the Einstein puzzle, it has to be looked at it as a whole in order to solve it.

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CrawGator

A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. Douglas Adams Mostly Harmless

You can see from the timing of my posts that it took about an hour, but I'm sure half of that was spent sitting here searching in vain for a missed condition in the clues. I steadfastly refused to use trial and error until it became clear that it was the only way out.

In terms of guessing, I was faced with a situation where each box had two or more possibilities. I looked for those that had been narrowed to only two possible answers and chose Surname when I saw that one choice limited the choices in another field. At that point one of the hospital boxes was reduced to only two so I flipped a coin and filled in an answer there. The rest of the puzzle was straight forward. I was lucky that my coin landed on tails

Even though I assumed there was only one answer I quickly tried a few other possibilities and ran into a contradiction for all of them.

I said I didn't like the puzzle not because it wasn't challenging, but because it's impossible to pick apart. One must construct a set of simultaneous equations or hammer it using trial and error. It's simply a matter of personal preference.

quote:

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Originally posted by Bregalad:
Regarding the Doctors puzzle ... I steadfastly refused to use trial and error until it became clear that it was the only way out...

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it could as easily have been "giraffe", "pelican", "blue whale" or "red-assed babboon"

how was i supposed to know that one of them had a fish?

i was not able to solve this one, even after looking at the answer, from the clues provided.

had at least one mentioned the word fish, ocean, lake, etc - i might have done it

quote:

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Originally posted by tafkact:
oddly enough, i can find NO mention of "fish" anwhere in the clues, and it's mentioned only once on the page - as the question.

it could as easily have been "giraffe", "pelican", "blue whale" or "red-assed babboon"

how was i supposed to know that one of them had a fish?

i was not able to solve this one, even after looking at the answer, from the clues provided.

had at least one mentioned the word fish, ocean, lake, etc - i might have done it

??

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Well the qestion "WHO KEEPS FISH?" logically tells you that one of the five men keep fish. If you have the other pets with their respective owners, the fish have to go to the owner lacking a pet by default.

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CrawGator

A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. Douglas Adams Mostly Harmless

quote:

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Originally posted by CrawGator:
Well the qestion "WHO KEEPS FISH?" logically tells you that one of the five men keep fish. If you have the other pets with their respective owners, the fish have to go to the owner lacking a pet by default.

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uhh.... (grind grind griiiiiiiiind) (DING!) (clickclickclickclick whrrrrrrrrrrr BZZZT!)

oh yeah!