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(Note: I doubt that this puzzle is complex enough to post it here, but I still took a try.)

There are 3 queens and 2 jacks (a full-house combination from poker) taken from a deck with standard suits, but with non-standard pictures. The queens are depicted as follows: the first queen is holding the vase with fruits, the second one is depicted with a bouquet of wheat ears and cornflowers, and the third queen is wearing a necklace with her suit symbol in it. The first of the jacks is depicted playing a flute, while the second one is holding a scythe and a bunch of hay. (There exists a real deck with face cards looking as described.)

The following is known about the set of cards:

  1. All the queens are of different suits, as well as all the jacks (so, there are no two cards of the same rank and suit).

  2. Both jacks are of the same color (as usual, hearts and diamonds are red, while clubs and spades are black).

  3. The queen of the same suit as the jack who plays the flute is also present in the set.

  4. If clubs are the trump suit, then both the queen with the fruits and one with the wheat ears can beat the jack holding a scythe. However, if diamonds are trumps, neither of these two queens cannot beat the other jack which plays the flute (again, as usual, that holds on standard card ordering, when a non-trump queen beats only a jack of her own suit, while the trump queen can beat any jack).

  5. The queen of hearts is not the one that holds the fruits.

The question is to find the suits of all the queens and jacks from the set (to match the suits with the depictions).

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  • $\begingroup$ Update: I've fixed a condition which was redundant. Now the solution is unique. $\endgroup$
    – trolley813
    Commented Nov 18, 2019 at 8:51

1 Answer 1

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Let's see..

Since most of the information is in point 4, it seems sensible to start the reasoning there.

4(a) If clubs are the trump suit, then both the queen with the fruits and one with the wheat ears can beat the jack holding a scythe.

From this we get that the suits of the fruit and wheat queens must be

clubs and scythe-jack's suit, in either order.

Combining this with

  1. The queen of the same suit as the jack who plays the flute is also present in the set.

we get that

both jacks have a queen in their respective suits present,

and

The scythe-jack isn't the jack of clubs.

Then, because

4(b) If diamonds are trumps, neither of these two queens cannot beat the other jack which plays the flute

This means that

The flute-jack isn't clubs either; the queen of clubs would beat it otherwise

so we know that

the jack of clubs isn't present

and from

  1. Both jacks are of the same color

we get that

the jacks must be red, and from above we know that they come with their respective queens.

Since we know the remaining queen's suit too (the trump suit from above), we'll just have to match the suits to the descriptions.

5. The queen of hearts does not wear a necklace.

  1. The queen of hearts is not the one that holds the fruits.

tells us its suit, because

from above, we know that the fruit-queen and the wheat-queen must be the queen of clubs (mentioned trump trump suit in 4a) and the queen of hearts (the non-trump red suit in 4b)

and adding these to the fact that the scythe-jack loses to both of them, we get the rest of the cards too:

fruit: queen of clubs
wheat: queen of hearts
scythe: jack of hearts
flute: jack of diamonds

And because of rule 3, we finally have

necklace: queen of diamonds.

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  • $\begingroup$ Excellent! By the way, here are the images of the real deck (text on the link is in Russian): dama-pik.com.ua/cards/french-suit/vremena-goda+1 $\endgroup$
    – trolley813
    Commented Nov 18, 2019 at 11:30
  • $\begingroup$ @trolley813 That's barley (and cornflowers - which are commonly found in cereal fields, hence their name) $\endgroup$
    – Strawberry
    Commented Nov 18, 2019 at 17:08

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