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#1 2009-08-12 09:22:24
Three Bags Puzzle
You have three bags. One has two apples. One has two oranges. One has one apple and one orange. You don't know which is which. They all have a label, and the labels are all wrong. You can only look at one fruit in one bag. Which bag should you look in to be sure of then knowing what all three bags contain?
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#2 2009-08-12 09:53:34
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#3 2009-08-12 12:27:49
- throughthefire
- Scratcher
- Registered: 2009-07-09
- Posts: 1000+
Re: Three Bags Puzzle
You look in the Apple and Orange bag to know that there are apples and oranges in the bags
Back. For now. Maybe.
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#4 2009-08-13 08:03:09
Re: Three Bags Puzzle
Nonono...he means identify which fruits are in which bags
Pull one fruit out of the bag labeled "red and orange". If the apple is orange, this is the bag with 2 orange apples. Otherwise, this is the bag with 2 red apples. Now, the bag labeled with two of the color apple you just pulled out cannot be right, so this bag is the one with two of the apple you did NOT pull out. The remaining bag is the one with one red and one orange.
Last edited by bhz (2009-08-13 08:10:18)
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#5 2009-08-13 13:58:39
- soccerisawsome
- Scratcher
- Registered: 2008-07-04
- Posts: 100+
Re: Three Bags Puzzle
You can't really decide which bag to look in because you don't know which is which!
Add your projects Me! SOCCER IS AWESOME! (anyone who says different will be wrong)
Join the VATICAN CITY HYPERLORDS I shall wait until you reply to this post...
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#6 2009-08-13 16:45:37
Re: Three Bags Puzzle
Imagine the three bags like this:
1 2 3
2 3 1
3 1 2
Think of bag 1 as the apples, bag 2 as the oranges and bag 3 as the mixed. By looking in one bag and finding whats in that compared with the label, you can see whats in the other bags. For instance, by looking at this table, if you looked in the bag labeled 2 (oranges), and found apples (1), you could look at the table and see that the pattern is the 2nd one. Therefore, the bag labeled Oranges would contain a mixture of apples and oranges, and the bag labeled Apples and Oranges would contain only oranges. With this it doesnt matter which bag you look in.
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#7 2009-08-13 18:52:28
- greenflash
- Scratcher
- Registered: 2009-05-27
- Posts: 1000+
Re: Three Bags Puzzle
Look in the mixture bag. Since you know it's not a mixture, you can figure out what what's in it by drawing a fruit. If it is an orange, it is an orange bag, and the one labelled oranges are apples, because if the miture is in the orange bag, the oranges would be correctly labelled. If it is an apple it is an apple bag, and the one labelled apples are oranges, because if the miture is in the apple bag, the oranges would be correctly labelled.
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