The Planet of Zorbus

Logic Level 3

You are an accomplished astrobiologist, and recently you have found some known facts about creatures on the extraterrestrial planet Zorbus.

Here are the facts that you have collected:

1) Some Meeks and Gadies have legs.

2) Not all Gadies have legs or hands.

3) All Meeks only have hands or legs.

.

.

If all these facts are true, then which of the following statements must be false?

Statement I: Meeks and Gadies could be the same creature.

Statement II: No Meeks or Gadies have hands and no legs.

Statement III: There exist a non-Gadie creature on Zorbus which have no hands and legs.

Statement I Statement II Statement III All the statements have a possibility of being true

Winston Choo by Winston Choo , 46, Singapore

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2 solutions

K T
Feb 1, 2021

Let's rephrase, the facts, to remove any possible ambiguity due to wording:

  • Fact 1a. There exist Meeks that have legs
  • Fact 1b. There exist Gadies that have legs
  • Fact 2 There exist Gadies that neither have hands, nor legs
  • Fact 3a. There do not exist any Meeks with both hands and legs
  • Fact 3b. There do not exist any Meeks that neither have hands, nor legs

Is Statement I true? Take a Gadie like meant in fact 2. This Gadie cannot be a Meek according to 3b. So Statement I is false.

Is Statement II true? It really says: all Meaks and Gadies either have legs, or miss hands. This might or might not be true, since such a creature does not conflict with any of the given facts

III. Might be true, or not, since nothing is said about possible other life forms

So I is false and I and III are undecided.

1 Helpful 1 Interesting 1 Brilliant 0 Confused
Veselin Dimov
Jan 18, 2021

Statement 2 tells that there is at least one Gadie creature with neither hands, nor arms. Statement 3 tells that Meeks have either legs, or arms. This means it's impossible for Meeks and Gadies to be the same creature.

0 Helpful 0 Interesting 0 Brilliant 1 Confused

How can statement III be truthful? If we know for sure that meeks must have either hands or legs, then the last statement that there is non gadie to be without legs and hands cannot be true since meeks are the only non gadies that we know so it is clearly ambiguous.

Stojan Samojlovski - 4 months, 3 weeks ago

Log in to reply

The problem asks which statement MUST be false. And there is no guarantee that on Zorbus there are no other creatures, which we (as scientists) are not aware of.

Veselin Dimov - 4 months, 3 weeks ago

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