I saw this challenge online and I googled it but I disagree with all the solutions I've found online. I am posting it on my blog because either:
- According to Moore's law if I say something wrong online someone will eventually correct me, and with that I hope that I will understand why I am wrong and how to think the correct way to solve this
- I am actually right and I am correcting others and people will google about this and they will find this, they will find this one post on Hive with the CORRECT answer in a sea full of wrong answers! Isn't Hive great? If you've found this trying to get the correct answer, WELCOME TO HIVE! Here you can get money for doing what you do normally on the internet :)
The question is short and simple:
There are 3 boxes. One of them contains gold.
In each box, there is a message, and one of them is
true.
Box 1's message is: "The gold is not in Box 2."
Box 2's message is: "The gold is in this box."
Box 3's message is: "The gold is not in this box."
Which box has the gold?
The internet says it is box 1
I googled it and the whole internet seems to believe that the gold is in box 1. Their explanations vary but none of the makes sense to me.
You can google it yourself and see their way of explaining why it is on box 1, I honestly didn't understand their explanation so I will simply elaborate on this post why I think it is not 1 and why I think it is in another box and that is the only one that makes sense to me (well, either that or it is a trick question and there is not enough information!)
The basics
The problem just states that one of the boxes has gold and that one of the messages is true. It is unrelated if the box that has the gold has a true or false message or anything like that, so let us not assume anything like that. There are boxes and messages, one box has gold, one box has a true message.
Let's evaluate the truth of the messages based on where the gold is:
Box 1's message is: "The gold is not in Box 2."
Box 2's message is: "The gold is in this box."
Box 3's message is: "The gold is not in this box."
If the gold is on box "x" the respective messages, from 1 to 3 are:
Box 1: Message 1 = ✅; Message 2 = ❌; Message 3 = ✅;
Box 2: Message 1 = ❌; Message 2 = ✅; Message 3 = ✅;
Box 3: Message 1 = ✅; Message 2 = ❌; Message 3 = ❌;
One of them is true? Or only one of them is true? Big difference
If the problem stated specifically that ONLY ONE is true to me it would be very simple. As we evaluated before, only if the gold is on box 3 we would have only 1 truthful message, if the gold were on any other box we could have more than one message being true.
I think this is where people get confused, but I didn't understand the reasoning behind EVERYONE on the internet saying that the gold is on the box 1, if I understood I would then be able to explain why it is wrong, but I didn't understand their explanation.
Keep in mind that I am not a native English speaker, the LANGUAGE BARRIER may be what is confusing me.
The best clue I have is that they are misunderstanding the question and the question is badly phrased (OR IT IS A TRICK QUESTION!!!!)
So the gold is in box....
3, the gold is inside box 3, because if it were on any other box there would be more than one correct message, so it could be a "tie" between box 1 and 2, both of them would have two true messages, how would I choose one of them?
But if it is inside box 3 then we have only one correct message. The challenge does not say that the gold has to be inside the box that says the truth, because again if that were the case, being in box 1 and being in box 2 would be a tie again, both being in a box with a true message and both cases having 2 true messages.
I could be wrong
I am posting here exactly because I want to understand why I could be wrong. To me it makes all the sense in the world for the gold to be inside box 3, because then one message would be true.
It could be the case that there is NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION and it is a trick question! The trick being that because the challenge is badly worded, it doesn't say "only one message is true", then the answer is that there is not enough information, thus it is a trick question.
If that is the case I hope that whoever wrote the challenge faces negative karma, just a little bit of negative karma to balance things out, I don't wish bad stuff on people at all so I hope they keep on living good lives and keep on writing trick questions if that makes them happy, but facing some trick challenges once in a while, because you know, you sow what you reap, or something like that (again I am not a native speaker lol)