Answers 411- SURPRISING RELATIONSHIP
If there were two men, each of whom marries the mother of the other, and
there is a son of each marriage, then each of such sons will at once be uncle
and nephew to the other. This is the simplest answer.
[Victor Meally supplies two more answers: (l) Each of two women marries
the father of the other, (2) A man marries the mother of a woman, and the
woman marries the father of the man.-M. G.]
- AN EPITAPH (A.D. 1538)
If two widows had each a son, and each widow married the son of the other
and had a daughter by the marriage, all the relationships will be found
to result.
- THE ENGINEER'S NAME
It is clear that the guard cannot be Smith, for Mr. Smith is certainly the
engineer's nearest neighbor, and his income is, therefore, exactly divisible by
3, which $10,000.00 is not. Also the stoker cannot be Smith, because Smith
beats him at billiards. Therefore the engineer must be Smith, and as we are con-
cerned with him only, it is immaterial whether the guard is Jones and the
stoker Robinson, or vice versa.
[This is one of Dudeney's most popular puzzles. It became the prototype
of scores of later logic problems, sometimes called Smith-Jones-Robinson
puzzles, in honor of Dudeney's original problem. James Joyce refers to the
problem ("Smith-Jones-Orbison") in the mathematics section of Finnegans
Wake (p. 302), and Dudeney himself is mentioned in footnote I on page 284.
-M.G.]
- STEPPING STONES
Number the stepping stones I to 8 in regular order. Then proceed as fol-
lows: I (bank), I, 2, 3, (2), 3, 4, 5, (4), 5, 6, 7, (6), 7, 8, bank, (8),
bank. The steps in parentheses are taken in a backward direction. It will thus be
seen that by returning to the bank after the first step, and then always going