Elysian Shadows

I heard these riddles today and both stumped me. (I have since heard the answers)

1) There are three lightbulbs in a closed room. You are outside of the room and you can only open the door once. There are three switches outside of the room which correspond to the 3 lightbulbs. Although they are not in any specific order.

Edit: When you have finished making your switch selection you may then walk down and open the door to the room with the lightbulbs

Edit 2: You cant see any light coming in or out of the room

How can you tell which switch belongs to each light bulb?


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2) An insurance salesman calls to the door of a house. He asks the lady about her family and wishes to know the ages of her children. She informs him that she has 3 children but does not wish to disclose information about them to a complete stranger. She says she will buy the insurance from him if he can guess their ages.


So he asks for a clue.

She tells him that: The product of their ages is 36

He comes back and asks for another clue.

She then tells him that the number of the house next door is the sum of their ages

He goes outside, looks at the number next door, and comes back. He asks for a final clue.

The lady then tells him that her eldest child plays the piano.

How old are the children ?

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You can use {spoiler}{/spoiler} to hide your answer but with ] brackets

Through use of a little bit of logic thinking, I'm pretty decent at logic puzzles and riddles, and that in the past I've used a method similar to this when doing circuitry, I'm pretty sure I've solved the first one easily. I don't want to say though, for people who might want to try themselves. The second one I'm not so sure on, since one loosely stated fact of the puzzle, makes my answer false.

EDIT: Never mind! got it! It was the fact that it made my answer false altogether, that shows the correct answer xD.

k1net1k wrote: An insurance salesman calls to the door of a house. He asks the lady about her family and wishes to know the ages of her children. She informs him that she has 3 children but does not wish to disclose information about them to a complete stranger. She says she will buy the insurance from him if he can guess their ages.


So he asks for a clue.

She tells him that: The product of their ages is 36

He comes back and asks for another clue.

She then tells him that the number of the house next door is the sum of their ages

He goes outside, looks at the number next door, and comes back. He asks for a final clue.

The lady then tells him that her eldest child plays the piano.

How old are the children ?

I forgot the answer, but I heard this yesterday on the Day9 daily. I know that's not relevant, but did you hear this riddle from this as well?

TheAustech wrote: I forgot the answer, but I heard this yesterday on the Day9 daily. I know that's not relevant, but did you hear this riddle from this as well?

Sure did

I couldn't figure it out, so I found the answer on the web.
But you forgot an important point, that you can do anything when you are inside the room.

superLED wrote:I couldn't figure it out, so I found the answer on the web.
But you forgot an important point, that you can do anything when you are inside the room.

On the other hand, it didnt say you couldnt either. The key to the riddle and the theme was "assumption"
Otherwise where do you stop. eg "You cannot drill a hole through the wall, you cannot ask your friends to call you from the other room"

k1net1k wrote:

superLED wrote:I couldn't figure it out, so I found the answer on the web.
But you forgot an important point, that you can do anything when you are inside the room.

On the other hand, it didnt say you couldnt either. The key to the riddle and the theme was "assumption"
Otherwise where do you stop. eg "You cannot drill a hole through the wall, you cannot ask your friends to call you from the other room"

Well, maybe I'm just stupid :p I thought that I only was able to look at the bulbs and figure it out that way :p

I already know the answer to the first one.

Concerning the second one:

Why don't we have a spoiler tag? I have tried to make the text the same color as the background, so highlight it if you want to read it



Now, i will consult google to find out what the answer is, i'm probably way off.

ismetteren wrote:I already know the answer to the first one.

Concerning the second one:

Why don't we have a spoiler tag? I have tried to make the text the same color as the background, so highlight it if you want to read it

Actually the answer is a bit different. I used the same trick, so highlight below if you want to see the answer.

There is some spoiler tag, but I cant think how to do it.

So this is how the riddles were originaly told...