A murder has been committed in a house. You are a detective and have to find out the murderer.
You investigate by asking three questions to each of the six suspects. Out of those six suspects, four are liars. It is not necessary that they speak everything a lie. But in their answers, there must be at least one lie. One of the six is the murderer.
There are eight rooms in the house in which the murder has been committed: Kitchen, Living Room, Bathroom, Garage, Basement, 3 Bedrooms.
At the time of the murder, only the murderer was present in the killing room. Any number of people can be present in any of the other rooms at the same time.
Can you identify the murderer and the four liars? Also, can you find out who was in which room?
The responses of all the suspects are mentioned below.
Joseph:
Peter was in the 2nd bedroom.
So was I.
David was in the bathroom.
Mandy:
I agree with Joseph that David was in the bathroom and Peter was in the 2nd bedroom.
But I think that Joseph was in the living room, OH MY GOD!
Peter:
Mandy was in the kitchen with Christopher.
But I was in the bathroom.
David:
I still say Peter was in the 2nd bedroom and Jennifer was in the bathroom.
Joseph was in the 1st bedroom.
Jennifer:
Peter was in the bathroom with Christopher.
And Mandy was in the kitchen.
Christopher:
David was in the kitchen.
And I was in the 2nd bedroom with Peter.
Your last good ping-pong ball fell into a narrow metal pipe embedded one foot deep in concrete.
How can you get it out undamaged, if all the tools you have are your tennis paddle, shoe laces, and plastic water bottle, which does not fit into the pipe?
I ask Joseph to pick any 5 cards out of a deck with no Jokers.
He can inspect then shuffle the deck before picking any five cards. He picks out 5 cards then hands them to me (Jack can't see any of this). I look at the cards and I pick 1 card out and give it back to Joseph. I then arrange the other four cards in a special way, and give those 4 cards all face down, and in a neat pile, to Jack.
Jack looks at the 4 cards i gave him, and says out loud which card Joseph is holding (suit and number). How?
The solution uses pure logic, not sleight of hand. All Jack needs to know is the order of the cards and what is on their face, nothing more.
In 2007, a puzzle was released and $2 million prizes were offered for the first complete solution. The competition ended at noon on 31 December 2010, with no solution being found. Wiki