Ben and Mark are students of Mr Tan. Mr Tan's birthday is on and both of them know that Mr Tan's birthday is one of these dates:
Mr Tan tells Ben the value of and tells Marc the value of .
Then Mr Tan asks them: "Do you know when is my birthday?"
Ben says: "I don't know, but I can ensure that Mark doesn't know too."
Mark says: "Initially I don't know, but I know it now."
Ben says: "Oh! Then I know it too."
Base on the dialogue and the dates given, can you figure out which date is Mr Tan's Birthday?
Give your answer as
Assume Mark and Ben are amazing at their logic
Try my Other Problems
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
The answer is 1/9
When Ben says he doesn't know and that Mark shouldn't be able to know, he is implying that if both the months and the dates have no repetition, it is not Mr Tan's birthday. Dates 7/6 and 2/12 eliminated. Since Ben is so sure that Mark doesn't know the date, the dates with the month 12 and the month 6 is eliminated. Then Mark says that he now knows what the date is. Since Mark knows the value of N, there should only be a unique value of N left, which eliminates 5/9, 5/3. This leaves us with 4/3, 1/9 and 8/3. Then Ben declares that he knows the date. Given that Ben knows the value of M, the value of M must be unique, which leaves us with the date 1/9 Therefore, the answer, 1 0 0 N + M = 1 0 9