  As I was browsing the urlLink PPS list of updated blogs today, I came across urlLink this blog entry about a puzzle. It was a logical puzzle, the kind that requires a paper and pencil and some brains. It took me about 15 or so minutes to finally solve it, although the first few minutes was spent on just trying to figure out how to tackle the problem. The whole exercise, nevertheless, strangely reinvigorated the spagehetti-concoction that is my brain. I am reminded of my primary school days, when puzzles like this was almost a weekly obsession for me. Some friends of mine would meet up at the library during recess and we'd go through some difficult (for my age then lah ) puzzles. Puzzles like the wolf, goat and cabbage dilemma. Although, most of the time we'd give up and sneak a peek at the answers, once in a while one of us would stumble upon the correct solution and we'd all whoop in delight, backslap each other and then get chased out of the library for making too much noise. Ahh, the good old geeky days.... All that ended when I discovered football one day, and the rest is history... Anyway, once the initial euphoria of solving the above puzzle wore off, I started looking around the web for more of such brain teasers. Found one decent site, called urlLink The Ultimate Puzzle Site . There's also a whole lot more puzzle sites out there, just set Google to "puzzles" and fire away..... I also started looking around my house for puzzle books when I also discovered an old dog-eared copy of urlLink Pierre Berloquin's Games of Logic in a dusty corner of the family library.
I was scratching my head, trying to remember when I got this book when I noticed the stamp on the inside cover. It was a book from my old primary school library! I must have borrowed it way back when and never returned it! Yikes, the late return fees must be astronomical!! Anyway, came across this puzzle in the book, somewhat similar in style to Ted's puzzle, so since I knew how to get started now, it took me only 7 minutes (I timed myself, of course) to put this baby to sleep... which is why I can't stop grinning...:) Think you can do better?
Go ahead, wipe that grin off my face.. The Puzzle Timothy notes that his five best friends do not know one another. To get things started he invites three of them to lunch: Adams, Brown and Carter. (The two other friends are Dickinson and Emerson. ) The five first names are, in no particular order, Alex, Bob, Chip, Dave, and Elmer. After the lunch Timothy lists the results: Bob still does not know Brown. Chip knows Adams. Dave knows only one of the others. Elmer knows three of the others. Alex knows two of the others. Dickinson knows only one of the others. Emerson knows three of the others. What is the full name of each of the five? 
