Solve the following puzzles. They certainly require some application of thought. Often we solve these kind of puzzles. However, we wouldn't deeply get into the thought process that went on in our heads leading to the solution. After dealing with inference, it would be a good exercise to solve the following puzzles and to find the basic blocks ( hetu, saadhya, vyaapti and paksha) of inference we make in each stage. Doing this, we spend some time thinking about our own thought process. So, try these.

(Since the premises are given, the induction part of inference is not needed here. Only deduction and some 'common sense' is needed ! )

1.

Smith,  Jones and Robinson are the pilot, copilot and navigator in a flight, not necessarily in the same order. There are three passengers with the same names aboard the flight. We know the following about them.

1. Passenger Robinson lives in Los Angeles

2. The copilot lives in Omaha.

3. Passenger Jones had long ago forgot the Math he ever knew.

4. The passenger with the same name as the copilot lives in Chicago.

5. The copilot and a passenger, a top mathematician play the same poker games. 

6. Smith beat the navigator at Billiards.

Match the pilot, copilot and navigator with their names.

  Hint

2.

Three persons are shown three red hats and two black hats. They are seated in chairs placed in single file and blindfolded. A hat is placed on each person's head, the remaining hats are hidden, and the blindfolds are removed. One at a time, each person is asked to guess the color of the hat on his own head.

The person who sits in the third chair is asked first. He confesses that he does not know the color of his hat, even though he can see the hats on the heads of his two companions, the second person, who can see only the hat of the person in front of him, also admits that he cannot guess his color. The first person, who can see no hats at all, says that he knows the color of his hat, and he is indeed correct. What color is the first person's hat? (All the three are equally intelligent !)

3.

The natives of a remote section of Chicago are all members of either one of two tribes, South-siders or North-siders. To a non-Chicagoan, they look exactly alike. But the members of the North-siders tribe always tell the truth, and the members of the South-siders tribe always lie. To this section of Chicago came an explorer who met three natives.

"Of what tribe are you?" the explorer asked the first native.

"Rush and Division", replied the native. (The native actually says, "I am North-siders" or "I am South-siders", but you cannot understand it. Only other natives understand.)

"What did he say?" asked the explorer to the second and third natives, both of whom spoke English.

"He says he is North-siders", said the second.
"He says he is South-siders", said the third.

To what tribes did the second and third natives belong?

Click here, only when you have exhausted all the possibilities and still didn't come up with the answer --> Solution