(Your investigations continue here.)
I am testing this puzzle to see how it works, and gauge the difficulty. I have plans which will be unveiled in future puzzles of a similar nature, pending interest etc here.
Here are the rules:
There is a group of people on an isolated island, and, in a curious twist, the butlers have all been murdered. You have been sent to collect statements from each person.
- Each person in the group is either guilty or innocent.
- Each person is either friends or not friends with each other person. The friendship is mutual.
- Each guilty person is friends with every other guilty person.
- Each innocent person has witnessed a number of events, which allows them to deduce the innocence or guilt of a number of people in the group. This may or may not have been reciprocated.
- The guilty people know who the guilty and innocent parties are.
- Each person is either boastful or modest (to be explained below).The statements that each person makes are as follows:
- Innocent modest people will simply make a list of truthful statements.
- Innocent boastful people will do the same, but will also make a statement about a random other person about whom they know nothing. If the person is their friend, they will say s/he is innocent. Otherwise they'll just say something (innocent or guilty at random).
- Guilty modest people will say that friends are innocent (regardless of whether they are); they will say that non-friends are guilty (which is inaccurate, because their non-friends are innocent by the above definitions).
- Guilty boastful people will do the same. But they will also make one truthful statement (either that one of their guilty friends is guilty or that one of their innocent non-friends is innocent).This kind of thing happens a lot to you...
On this particular day, you go out to the island and get to sit down with the main characters: Bill, Celia, Laine, Timika, Delicia, and Terrance
These are their statements:
Statements of Bill:
- I am innocent
- Delicia is guilty
- Laine is guilty
- Celia is guilty
- Timika is innocentStatements of Celia:
- I am innocent
- Timika is guilty
- Bill is guilty
- Laine is innocent
- Terrance is innocentStatements of Laine:
- I am innocent
- Bill is guilty
- Terrance is innocentStatements of Timika:
- I am innocent
- Terrance is guilty
- Delicia is guilty
- Bill is innocentStatements of Delicia:
- I am innocent
- Laine is innocent
- Bill is guilty
- Terrance is innocentStatements of Terrance:
- I am innocent
- Timika is guilty
- Delicia is innocent
- Laine is innocent
- Bill is guilty
This seems like a complete disaster. You are struggling to find something sensible out of what they say. So you phone your mentor and good friend, Hercule, and he says, "Ze simplest solution is probably true. Find ze solutio' wiz ze fewest conspirators. Zat will be your answer."
As always, post your solutions below, and please also comment about the puzzle - what you like and what you don't. How difficult your found this. As I said, I'm hoping to do a couple more, assuming this works as intended...