Logic Puzzles

heh, well if that wasn't hard enough, there's a more difficult version of that riddle, one I have yet to solve myself - Say you have the same setup with the 9 balls, one different, but this time you don't know whether the different ball is heavier or lighter. To solve this one, you have to isolate the unique ball and determine whether it's heavier or lighter. You can also use the scale 3 times to answer this one.

Izoshua wrote: heh, well if that wasn't hard enough, there's a more difficult version of that riddle, one I have yet to solve myself - Say you have the same setup with the 9 balls, one different, but this time you don't know whether the different ball is heavier or lighter. To solve this one, you have to isolate the unique ball and determine whether it's heavier or lighter. You can also use the scale 3 times to answer this one.

Are you sure that's possible? If one the first weigh the scales move then how do you know they went up because it was lighter or down because it was heavier? One could only check with a third point of reference, which would involve weighing one of the groups against another set and waste your second measurement.

Honestly, I don't know for sure if it's possible because I have yet to solve it, but my logic instructor told me it was . He said it's a matter of thinking outside the box lol.

Izoshua wrote: He said it's a matter of thinking outside the box lol.

That's the bit that always gets me... They're called logic puzzles but really they're 'logic and creativity' puzzles.

True. I guess that's what draws me to these logic puzzles though. The "out of the box" one's require you to really delve into the nature of things and discover the more fundamental forces that influence the more apparent ones. If that makes any sense

Lol, well I just figured it out. It's definitely possible. It's actually much less "out of the box" than I thought.

Izoshua wrote: Lol, well I just figured it out. It's definitely possible. It's actually much less "out of the box" than I thought.

Answer?

Time for a hard one. How can it be that there is a empty square?

Akkarin wrote: Answer?

Warning: Spoiler!

The only thing I can think of is timing the speed the odd ball out falls at, though I'm hesitant, because I'm not sure whether the difference would be great enough to measure without tools (since you only have 9 balls and a scale, no stopwatch).

Nope. I did consider it to be something like that as well, but the answer does involve using the scale three times.