From Dave Weinberger Dave Winer serves coffee to four logicians
You can check his reader answers, including mine, at the link. But first, ya wanna have ago? (NB, for Saltation, this is not an invitation to a fight /Ockerspeak)Four logicians are having breakfast. Waitress asks — Will you all be having coffee? The first logician says “I don’t know.” Second says “I don’t know.” Third says “I don’t know.” Fourth says “No.” The waitress returns with their coffees. Who gets coffee?
It does have a solution. The solution is not a cheat or wordplay or a sort of “lightbulb” joke anything extraneous to the puzzle. For example, it’s not “None of them, because logicians drink tea” or “None, because the first three were saying, “I don’t. No.” or “None, because coffee isn’t axiomatic.”
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