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.

3iff · very unbifflike

A Premiership Puzzle

The first games of the English Football Premiership were played last weekend (not really!) and a remarkable thing happened.

Of the 10 games, every match result was different. 35 goals were scored in total, 18 at home, 17 away. There were 3 drawn games and no team won by more than 3 goals. There were 4 victories for the home sides.

Local team groups
Aston Villa, West Brom, Wolves, Stoke (Midland teams)
Man Utd, Man City, Bolton, Blackburn, Wigan (North West teams)
Liverpool, Everton (Liverpool teams)
Newcastle, Sunderland (North East teams)
Spurs, Chelsea, QPR, Fulham, Arsenal (London teams)
Norwich, Swansea (Other teams)

The home sides were:
Arsenal
Blackburn
Everton
Fulham
Man Utd
Norwich
Stoke
Sunderland
West Brom
Wigan

Away Sides were:
Aston Villa
Bolton
Chelsea
Liverpool
Man City
Newcastle
QPR
Spurs
Swansea
Wolves

Unfortunately, there's no list of which home team played which away team, but...

1. No team played another local team and none of the London teams won a game.
2. Midland teams had 3 wins as did the North West teams.
3. Bolton are top of the league after these first matches while Wolves are bottom.
4. Both North East teams lost by a single goal but they didn't play Midland teams.
5. Four teams (two home, two away) failed to score a goal.
6. Four games saw at least 5 goals.
7. The 'other' teams both scored for a total of 3 goals between them.
8. QPR are the highest placed London team thanks to a hat trick (3 goals) from Jones.
9. Wigan were briefly top of the league until Fulham played their game in the late evening kick-off.
10. The two Manchester teams were undefeated and both scored at least once.
11. Spurs kept a clean sheet (they didn't concede a goal).
12. Both Liverpool teams lost by 2 goals despite scoring themselves.
13. Swansea are 4 places ahead of Chelsea even though they have scored fewer goals.
14. West Brom are third in the league.

Once you have worked out all the fixtures and scores, you should be able to find the name of another football team.

Notes:
It's 3 points for a win and 1 for a draw, nothing for a defeat. Teams on equal points are rated by highest goal difference (scored-conceded) with ties rated on most goals scored (so a team winning 5-1 is rated higher than a team winning 4-0).
You shouldn't otherwise need any knowledge of English football to solve this but I'll answer questions if required.

Suspence · Daedalian Member

3iff · very unbifflike

I did say it wasn't real...

Regards the score...it is reported here in the UK as (for example)

Brighton 1 Colchester 3 (Brighton being the home side) as the home side is always indicated first regardless of the score.

For the puzzle, 1-0 is considered the same as 0-1. So, if one of the results is 1-0 then there's no other game that also finishes 1-0 or 0-1.

However, as long as the correct score is associated with the correct team there shouldn't be a problem...

Hope this helps.

novice · No harm. Pun intended!

I get these results:

3iff · very unbifflike

Spot on...now there's just the problem of discovering another team name from those results...

You probably won't require a hint...but I'm happy to provide one if required.

novice · No harm. Pun intended!

Using a team's scored goals as an index into its name, and taking index 0 as no letter, we get

Nottingham Forest

3iff · very unbifflike

Perfect. Well done.