SRL Archive - NOTA

There are three children, Tim, Pam, and Ray, arguing about who of them is the best soccer player.

Tim: "I am the best!"
Pam: "No you're not!"
Ray: "I am the best!"
Tim: "No you're not!"
Pam: "I am the best!"

As we all know, the best soccer player never lies.

Who is the best soccerplayer?

First one to solve this gets a smarty-cookie that can be attached to your signature. It makes all other forum users obey.


The right answer:

We shall do this by formalizing:
t: Tim is best, p: Pam is best, r: Ray is best.

Now we shall formalize the arguments of the children (in the same order than they are given):
t ↔ t p ↔ ¬t r ↔ r t ↔ ¬r p ↔ p

Now we take away tautologies, which are arguments 1, 3 and 5.
So we have left:
p ↔ ¬t and t ↔ ¬r

And also we know that only one of the children is the best, which means that
t ˅ p ˅ r
has to be true (it must get value 1=true)
¬↔→ ˅ ˄
And therefore we can say that there can't be 2 best players, which means that all these:
t˄p, t˄r, p˄r
are false (they always get value 0=false)
We can write it like this:
¬((t˄p) ˅ (t˄r) ˅ (p˄r))

Now we make a truth value table of these. 1=true, 0=false

And to make the next table simpler, let's say
(t˄p) ˅ (t˄r) ˅ (p˄r) = A

And now we shall only inspect the interesting columns of these 2. I have highlighted the things that give us the right answer:

As we can see, all the arguments that were supposed to get value 1, get the value 1 on the same row where t=1, p=0, r=0
-> Tim is the best soccer player
PriSoner WON THE COOKIE!
Sorry, at first i wrote no one won :S i didn't notice he had a real explanation there!!
It was accurate enough :)

Congratulations! :)
oh and PriSoner btw: you put that ugly thing to your sig or you cry and put that ugly thing to your sig

Pam.

Pam says Tim is not the best. Tim says Ray is not the best. Pam is last, so therefor he must be the best.

ok, its either me or ray :p
i say ray coz he the only on who didnt say no youre not
t-m

edit: i would have to see them first ;)

Ray is the best player because he is the only one that speaks only once. Tim and pam both claim they are the best but both of them claim the other two to be lairs therefore Ray is the best player.

It would obviously be pam who's the best because nobody ever accused her of being a liar (not being the best).

If this isnt one of the stupid trick puzzles, then pam becaues she was never negated.

If it is one of those tricks, then it can be anybody, because any of them 3 can be lying about the other person lying.

I think this is a stupid puzzle, nothing really logical to build off of.

From: JAD
It would obviously be pam who's the best because nobody ever accused her of being a liar (not being the best).

Agreed

Tim, because nobody else said him, and 2 weeks is a long time.. it should be more like.. 2 days :)

Where the hell did Ray come from. He only says one thing :(

From: marpis
There are three children, Tim, Pam, and Ray, arguing about who of them is the best soccer player.

Tim: "I am the best!"
Pam: "No you're not!"
Ray: "I am the best!"
Tim: "No you're not!"
Pam: "I am the best!"

As we all know, the best soccer player never lies.

Who is the best soccerplayer?

This puzzle is missing at least one necessary peice of information in order to solve it. I would sugest it has either been written down wrong or missunderstood.

As things stand.

All three people Claim to be the best. At least 2 of them are lying.

Two of them state that one of them is lying, neither claim the same person to be a liar. Both could be telling the truth or both could be lying or just one could be telling the truth.

One person claims he is the best but accuses no-one of lying. This tells us nothing. If he was the one telling the truth he could accuse either of not being the best. If he was lying then the same applies.

Tim is the best. Why?

Reason for "Ray":
Ray (Short for Raymundo) is an immigrant and refuses to argue because the police might be called due to said conflict and he would be deported. He must win soccer games to feed his family of 17 and probably lies about his papers all the time.

Reason for Pam:
Pam is a woman. Nuff' said.(Or a man with a woman's name, but now would you trust somebody who lies about their gender?)

Disclaimer - This was in no way meant to be offensive to anyone, just some light humor.

Innocent muse, you sir, have won. Nuff' said. xD

From: PriSoner
This puzzle is missing at least one necessary peice of information in order to solve it.

No it is not, as i already said in the 1st post :P

Cristiano Ronaldo.

im the best :D ;)

From: Hugolord
Cristiano Ronaldo.

lol he's gay an honorable man

I still contend that the first post is missing a vital piece of information despite Marpis insisting it isn't.

For example if the best soccer player never lies but the other two players always lie the answer can be worked out.

If my above example is true and the other two players always lie then the answer is Tim.

This is because If Tim has to lie then his statement about Ray also has to be a lie, which would make Ray the best player. But this would mean that Pam would then have to be a liar and that would mean that her statement that "Tim was not the best" would also be a lie making Tim the best. As there can not be two best players then a scenario with tim Lying just doesn't work.

If Ray is telling the Truth then we go back to Tim and Pam contradicting each other, as both would have to be liars then this scenario would not work either.

If Tim is telling the truth though all other statements work if they are lying without any conflicts of logic..

Of course this only works if the other two players HAVE TO LIE something which is not mentioned in this puzzle and as Marpis insists all information is correct and present in the first post I fail to see how you can work it out.

Ugh. Just tell us the answer so people don't get all philosophical on us :(

DAMN YOU PRISONER! Ha ha I'm afraid it will be something about logic or humans changing their minds or something so I'm not gonna read it..

I would have to go with Zinédine Zidane as the answer, reason being that I interpreted the question as best "soccer" player in all time, thus this provides my reasoning.

From: mixster
I would have to go with Zinédine Zidane as the answer, reason being that I interpreted the question as best "soccer" player in all time, thus this provides my reasoning.

It never said. Best soccer player of all time. It can be the best handicapped soccer player for all we know.

I think this is a dumb puzzle. I already stated my reasoning though.

TIME'S UP! RIGHT ANSWER IN THE 1st POST!

I still think my answer wins, I even said it was Tim.