eddy

Kevin said:

“You will take my marbles”

Take that stoopid bully!!

jessica f

nothing? Or a paradoxal statement? I’ll have to mull over this a little more.

Colleen

You will take my marbles
I read this kind of brainteaser in a fantasy book. And who says those don’t teach you anything!

Nakisa

“I am a liar” that way if he’s telling the truth, it’s false (he keeps his marbles) and if the statement is false, it is true (he keeps his money).

Ashley Nguyen

He said, “You will take my money and marbles” That way it’ll be true and false … I think.

Kathy

But what if the statement “You will take my marbles” is true? Then the bully takes the marbles, AND he takes the money because it was a true statement. So the poor kid ends up with nothing.

Am I missing something here? Probably. lol.

jane

he stated an opinion!
one that is neither true nor false…
???
hehe

Kathy

I agree with Nakisa on this one. I think the boy says, “I am a liar.” That way the bully won’t know what to do because if the statement is true, then then boy is lying, which means he’s saying something false. If the statement is false, then it’s really true because the boy is lying. So it’s one of those weird statements that’s simultaneously both true and false either way you look at it.

I don’t think it’s “You will take my marbles” for the reason stated above – then the bully can take the marbles, proving the statement true, which means he also gets to take the money. So then the boy is left with nothing.

Better would be if the statement were “You will take ONLY my marbles.” The reasoning is if the bully does take the marbles, the statement is true, which means he should take the money, but he can’t because he already took the marbles. Or if he takes the money, then the statement is false, which means he should take the marbles, but he can’t because he already took the money. BUT, I don’t like this answer because the truth of the boy’s statement hinges on what the bully decides to do. You have to wait for him to take action. And by taking action, the bully renders the statement true or false. Whereas with “I am a liar,” the bully can’t take any action in the first place because he’s in limbo and doesn’t know what to do.

Am I making any sense? lol. What I’m trying to say is that the bully put forth this condition – that he will take a certain action based on the truth of the boy’s statement. So from the bully’s perspective, he needs to determine the truth first before he takes something. If he can’t tell what’s true and what’s false, then he won’t know what to do. Whereas with the other answer, he takes action first, then evaluates the truth, and then takes action again based on that. It’s a bit circular in my opinion.

Oh who knows.

eddy

“You will take my marbles” is much better.

Think about it, the bully said he will take only a part of the stuff, so losing both is out of the question. Now he will have to make a decision, if the takes the marbles, the phrase was true, but he can’t take them if it’s true. If he doesn’t take the marbles, the phrase is false and then he has to take them. There is no way he can do this.

Saying “I’m a liar” doesn’t mean anything. If the boy really is a liar, then he is telling the truth this time (liar do tell the truth sometimes) and will lose his money. If he’s not a liar, then he’s lying now so he still is a liar and the phrase is still true. So saying “I’m a liar” will always make him lose the money because it will always be true. Think about it, can you say that you’re a liar if you’re not a liar? No because that makes you a liar.

So, “You will take my marbles” is perfect. Other paradoxes would work.

Kathy

I would still disagree. There is nothing in the question that dictates the bully must take either all of the money or all of the marbles, but not both. Saying that he will take a part of the treasure doesn’t automatically mean he can’t take both things…it just means that he can’t everything. So if the boy says, “You will take my marbles,” all the bully has to do is take some of the marbles, thereby proving the statement true. And because the statement is true, the bully gets to take all of the money. So in this scenario, the bully gets to walk away with some of the marbles and all of the money, without violating any of the conditions he put forth at the beginning.

If the boy had said, “You will take all of my marbles, but none of my money,” then that would be tougher to argue against.

But I still maintain “I am a liar” or “I always lie” as my answer because the bully will have trouble initiating action in this case, whereas in the previous scenario, action must be taken first to determine the truth of the statement.

You could argue that in real life, liars sometimes tell the truth. Sure. But this is a brainteaser. It’s an artificial set-up to begin with, and the wording is important. If you assume that even liars tell the truth sometimes, then you would also have to come up with a different answer to the fork in the road brainteaser. The answer to that one only works because the liar always lies. If the liar sometimes told the truth, then you’d have to come up with a different answer.

What I like about the “I am a liar” answer is that the statement itself is a paradox, and for that reason, it prevents the bully from taking anything in the first place. For the other answer, it’s not the statement itself but the situation that is the paradox.

I apologize if I’m over-analyzing the question. lol. I’m just working with what I was given. I help students with this type of thing for standardized tests, in which words like “only,” “all,” “some,” “must,” etc. often end up being the difference between what is considered correct and what isn’t. Real life lends itself more easily to interpretation, but when faced with the bubble sheet, what can you do…you have to play the game or go home. lol.