Minus' Solution to

Vote for Me
Posted September 9 - 15, 1996

Opps, Minus goofed! He had a pretty bad hangover from eating some drunken shrimp and couldn't see straight. So, instead of recognizing Xido as a female, Minus made Xido a male in his original question. However, several astute MathDEN members pointed this out to us and helped Minus correct the question. Thanks, folks!

Here is Minus' solution to the correct question:

Buxa, Cawa, Dava, and Xido are females. Aza, Yeco and Zabo are the only males, and since there must be three on the committee, they must be on it.

Xido cannot be on the committee, as she would make the third person from Venus, since Yeco and Zabo are already members.

Any one of Buxa, Cawa, or Dava could be the lone female on the committee.

Xido is the only member who cannot be on the committee.


Your Solutions

Henry Fang at Christ Church Grammar School in Western Australia put Minus in his place. He noticed that there was an error in Minus' original question and offered a new question. We couldn't reach you by e-mail, Henry. So here's our thanks.

We feel that the question was improperly phrased. We think that the question should have been 'Which alien is a definite commitee member'. If this was true. The answer would have been 'Azza'. Because he is the only male Maritian.

According to the rules. Only two aliens from each planet can become commitee members and that three of them must be male. Since all the Venutian candidates are male. 1 male and 1 female would be required of the Maritian candidates.

Since 'Azza' is the only male candidate out of the Maritians. He would have to be a definate member.



Michael Bayliss' class in Western Australia worked on Minus' early (hence erroneous) version of the question. However, we had to give Mr. Bayliss' class credit for coming up with a valid solution. Bravo!

After many long difficult hours of research, our group found around nine different combinations for the committee. However, the committee combinations are restricted due to the numbers representing the Martians and the Venutians and their sexes.

Here's a list of whether they're male or female.

Martians:               Venutians:
Aza M                   Zabo M
Buxa F                  Yeco M
Cawa F                  Xido M
Dava F
From this list we concluded that Aza from the Martians had to be in the committee because he was the only male in the group and Buxa, Cawa and Dava had to fight amongst themselves to get in. Two of the Venutians could go in (Because they're all male) but one of them would have to be left out.


Christian Tawfik [Christian_Tawfik@blackbox.at] sent us the correct solution to the correct question:

In my opinion XIDO canīt be member of the committee. There have to be three males and there are only three on the list. Two of them are Venutians, so the third Venutian, Xido, isnīt allowed to become a member, because there are no more than two members from each group allowed.

As punishment, we're going to
make Minus listen to 12 hours
of Barney's Greatest Hits.
That purple dino never makes mistakes!