On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 2:30 PM, Victor Miller <victorsmiller@gmail.com> wrote:
Is the following within the rules?
1) Man sends box containing ring, padlocked to the lady.
This works only if the post office is "convinced that the key will never come their way" How and why are they convinced of this? If this is intended as a closed-world puzzle with precisely defined operations and consequences, then the possible operations and their consequences need to be defined more precisely. In particular, when a locked box is sent, how does the post office decide whether to allow this? If it's intended as an open-world lateral thinking puzzle. there are lots of solutions I like better than the intended one. As it stands, the activity feels less like solving a puzzle, and more like "solutions get proposed, and the conditions of the puzzle get clarified/changed to invalidate that solution unless it's the intended solution". Andy
2) Lady adds her own padlock to the box and sends it to the man. 3) Man removes his padlock with his key and sends the locked box back to the lady. 4) Lady uses her own key to remove the her padlock. No keys are exchanged.
On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 2:18 PM, Dave Dyer <ddyer@real-me.net> wrote:
At 10:49 AM 5/9/2016, Brent Meeker wrote:
Send the key first. Only send the box after the key arrives.
No, send the box first. If an anonymous locked box won't get through, the whole exercise is pointless. Any attempt to send the key first might alert the authorities to watch for the box. Once the box is safely transferred, as many attempts as necessary can be made to send a key for the box, which is already secure.
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