The Grey Labyrinth is a collection of puzzles, riddles, mind games, paradoxes and other intellectually challenging diversions. Related topics: puzzle games, logic puzzles, lateral thinking puzzles, philosophy, mind benders, brain teasers, word problems, conundrums, 3d puzzles, spatial reasoning, intelligence tests, mathematical diversions, paradoxes, physics problems, reasoning, math, science.

Ghost Post · Icarian Member

Boogedy boogedy
Maybe I'm just stoopid, but I think your solution to the Pixie and the Sprite is wrong. It doesn't factor in that lying pixies can pick ratios other than 4/10. To cut the sophostries short, check this out: This is the generic formula for the solution the way you guys did it.

{385 - x^2 + x(10-x)} / (650 - 20x)

According to you this gives the probability that the pixie who says "I lie X/10 times" lied when giving you directions. Anyhoo, you'll find that this number is always greater than a half (for x less than 10 anyways). That's a problem since you can't just go around convinced that pixies lie more often than not before they open their mouths.

The answer I got is a 203/370 chance that the pixie lied to you. I figure this from a population of 11000 evenly distributed pixies. Anyway, if I'm wrong you can paint my sister blue. BTW, thanks for a great site!

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