Can you solve it ?

[David Robertson]

Even the answer makes my head spin

[MartinCarpenter]

I'm not sure if that's your fault

You see, in line 1 *all* of Alberts knowledge is meant to be based on the month he's been given.

Then suddenly in line 2 Bernard has clearly been talking/listening to Albert. Ditto in 3.

That's a really big difference in how the logic operates and it isn't really anywhere in the question statement.

As posed, I would in fact genuinely tend to assume that Albert knowing that Bernard doesn't know the answer in line 1 was based on having asked him.
(You might work out what they mean because you can't then answer the question, but maybe not.).

[Brian Towers]

I think with both these questions familiarity helps a lot. In Q1 you quite quickly come to view them upside down because there are no obvious sequences or dates. Q2 is of a type that I remember appearing frequently in the maths/logic puzzle books I enjoyed when I was about 14 or 15. If you are familiar with the genre you know you can solve it just by going through the obvious set theoretic steps. It is work but much easier than a rook and pawn endgame.

[Brian Towers]

Here's another one. a verbal question this time:

What is the most number of repetitions of a word you can come up with in a grammatically correct piece of English text which makes sense?

Something like "Goal! Goal! Goal! Goal! Goal! Goal!" doesn't count. It needs to have a bit more syntactic content.

[Michael Farthing]

Paul said, "I hope that that that that was a mistake"

"That's nonsense" said John, You need better intonation: say 'I hope that that "that that" was a mistake', though actually it wasn't.

Whatever, said Paul "that that 'that that' " that "that that that that' replaced, was certainly an improvement.

[Kevin Thurlow]

Smith, where Jones had had "had had", had had "had", "had had" had had the teacher's approval.

You can probably have a long argument about placing of commas.

[David Robertson]

David's example, unlike Michael's which had had 'had', had had ' had had': 'had had' had had general approval.

[ah, Kevin got there first!]

I recall a longer, and hugely more tiresome version, based on a similar syntax involving "had had 'had had had had'...etc

[Andrew Bak]

Boris Johnson once said on Have I Got News for You that you can make a legitimate sentence with any amount of the word "buffalo".

e.g. Buffalo Buffalo buffalo means that bison from New York talk.

[MJMcCready]

Boris Johnson once said on Have I Got News for You that you can make a legitimate sentence with any amount of the word "buffalo".

e.g. Buffalo Buffalo buffalo means that bison from New York talk.

Yes, I think its the word buffalo x7, which qualifies as noun, collective noun, verb and possibly adjective!

[Tristan Clayton]

Going over their most recent game, Lester discussed why he had avoided simplifying through a sequences of exchanges, which would have led to a draw by perpetual. "You see," he explained, "after take, take, take, take, take, take, take, take, take, take, take, take, take, take, it's check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check..."

[Paul McKeown]

At a recent Easter Camp at Fulham Junior Chess Club, one of the parents gave me the following teaser: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02p87xj. Took me 5 to 10 minutes, I'm sure many here can beat that! Skills required are similar to retrograde analysis, I would suggest.

[John Clarke]

Got the car-park one straight away. Only numbers that make sense either way up are present, which should be a pretty clear sign.

The Singapore one took about an hour, once I had the chance to fairly get down to it. Very hard to keep in mind who's in possession of which facts at each stage! Plus you have to come up with scenarios in which their statements have to be true. To begin with I thought you had to assume A and B knew each other's birthdays, etc, etc. But this sort of puzzle, if correctly drafted, never does need that sort of assumption, or other extraneous knowledge.

One of my favourite setters of these problems was Martin Hollis, cousin of the late England chess international Adrian Hollis. He had a regular spot in the New Scientist called "Tantaliser" around 40 years ago, and many of his pieces were collected into a book with that title. Hours of fun, if you can still find a copy anywhere, and not too abstruse.

Drat you Paul for putting that hat one in! Now I'll have to cudgel my brain some more ...