Honestants and Swindlecants #2 (Solution)

taken from: http://www.istockphoto.com/  

Have you got your answer? Let’s compare with mine.

Just like the 1^st Honestants and Swindlecants brain teaser, this is also a typical logic problem which can be solved by using classic logic operations.

Here, we (still) got 3 main clues:

• There are only 2 kinds of people: Honestants and Swindlecants.
• The Honestants always tell truth (never tell lie).
• The Swindlecants always tell lie (never tell truth). 

From the given situation we know that there are 2 persons we have to judge whether they’re Honestants or Swindlecants. One of them (just call him D) said, “I am a Swindlecant or the other one is an Honestant.” The word “or” told us that –whether D is lying or not– only one statement is true (D is a Swindlecant or E is an Honestant), and we haven’t known which one it is.

Let’s analyse:

• If D is an Honestant, he’d say, “I’m an Honestant,” and he’d say the truth about E.
• If D is a Swindlecant, he’d say, “I’m an Honestant,” and he’d lie about E.

Knowing D must have said “I’m an Honestant,” (whether it’s true or false), we can conclude that the first statement (“D is a Swindlecant”) is false (if it’s false, so the truth is D is an Honestant). It means that the second is true (E is an Honestant).

So, D and E must be Honestants.

This brain teaser I copied from Brain Teasers (http://brainden.com/logic-problems.htm). Just on click on that link, then you’ll get more brain teasers to tease your brain or even just to ease your boring day. When you get stuck, you can visit brain teasers forum to get extra “clues” from them whom have tried to solve it (but for me, it’s better to do it by myself as I did in solving this quiz).