Test your puzzle skills on this tricky 3-letter words logic puzzle. Find the hidden word among six using just three clues! (Yes or No answers only).
The 3-letter words logic puzzle
A teacher writes six words on a board: “has cat max dog dim tag.” She gives her three students, Arun, Bishnu and Chintu each a piece of paper with one different letter from one of the words. Then she asks, “Arun, do you know the word?” Arun immediately replies, “Yes”. She asks, “Bishnu, do you know the word?” He thinks for a moment and replies,“Yes”. Then she asks Chintu the same question. He thinks and then replies also, “Yes”.
Can you find out the chosen word and the letters given to the three students?
Recommended time 20 minutes.
Must make conclusions with total certainty first from the answer of Arun, then of Bishnu and the last Chintu.
Solution to the puzzle of three letters from one word:
Essentially, you have to eliminate possible candidate words based on the three replies step by step reducing the possible words to just one.
Step 1: Implications of Arun’s confirmation:
Can we eliminate any of the six words from the possible list of words by Arun's immediate confirmation?
Yes we can. Since Arun knew immediately, his letter must be unique among all six words. This eliminates 'tag' as all its letters appear twice.
The chosen word must be one of,
has, cat, max, dog, dim.
This is clear to us as well as to Bishnu and Chintu.
Step 2: Implications of Bishnu’s confirmation
After Arun’s confirmation, Bishnu could also deduce the same five words as possible candidates.
As he also confirmed with “Yes”, he must have been given a unique letter from the five words.
As the word 'tag' is eliminated, the uniquely appearing letters are now,
(h, s), (c, t), (x), (o, g), (i).
We have collected the unique letters appearing in one word together.
Since in 'max', ‘x’ is the only unique letter in the word as also in all other words, Arun and Bishnu could not have been given the same letter ‘x’. This eliminates the word ‘max’ from the list of possible choices. Similarly, the letter ‘i’ being the only unique letter in the word ‘dim’ and the other words, it is also eliminated. The possible words are now,
has, cat, dog.
Step 3: Implications of Chintu’s confirmation
Chintu must also had a unique letter from these three words. Like us, he could also eliminate the other three words.
With 'a' common between the two words 'has' and 'cat', all three students could not have been given a unique letter from these two.
The only possible word left is then ‘dog’.
Answer: 'dog' was the word chosen.
Step 4: Identifying the letters given to the three students
At first only the letter ‘o’ in the word ‘dog’ was unique among all six words and it must have been given to Arun.
For Bishnu, ‘d’ was not unique in the shortened list of five words but ‘g’ was (the word 'tag' eliminated). So, Bishnu was given the letter ‘g’. Finally, the third letter ‘d’ by now unique, was given to Chintu.
This is step by step possibility reduction by logic analysis.
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