Riddles

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Answer these riddles and the esophagus will let you pass.

Riddles for 'Lemmy'winks.

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Here is one of the few good and hard riddles I know (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago by UmeU@lemmy.world to c/riddles@catata.fish

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The year is 1985. You are on the ground floor of a four-story building. On the top floor there is a lightbulb. On the ground floor with you there are three light switches. All three switches are connected to electricity but only one of the switches controls the lightbulb on the top floor - the other two switches are not connected to anything.

You cannot go outside, there is no one helping you, and most importantly, you can only go up to the top floor one time to check.

How do you determine with absolute certainty which of the three switches controls the lightbulb?

If this post gets any traction I’ll post the answer.

The answer involves no wordplay, is not cheesy or impossible to figure out… just use logic and you should be able to come up with the correct answer.

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[–] WVbrU@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Answer?

Assuming you know all switches start in the off position: Turn the left switch on and leave it for a while. Then switch it off and turn the middle switch on. Go upstairs.

If the light is on, the middle switch controls it.

If the light is off, feel the bulb. If it is warm, then the left switch controls it. Otherwise, the right switch controls it.

It's funny you have to specify the year, now that LED bulbs are becoming the norm! (and CFLs before them)

[–] UmeU@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

Ding ding ding, good job!

Tap for spoiler

Specifying the year might have been too much of a hint but I told this to my 9 year old niece and she immediately said ‘but what if it was an LED bulb?’.

I had always told this riddle without specifying a year and it always seems to stump people.