Minus' Solution to

Yakkity Yak
Posted August 11 - 17, 1997

If Janet talked to Mary first, her blonde hair would stay blonde. Talking to Larry next would change it to brown. Talking to Mary again would turn it to red. Talking to Mary - Larry - Mary makes her hair red.

Talking to Mary - Kathy - Mary will make her hair brown.
Talking to Kathy - Mary - Kathy will make her end up with brown hair.
Talking to Kathy - Larry - Kathy will make her end up with blonde hair.
Talking to Larry - Mary - Larry will make her end up with red hair.
Talking to Larry - Kathy - Larry will make her end up with red hair.

Thus, Janet must have talked to Kathy - Larry - Kathy.
Your Solutions

Dean Vendramin [nyr@sk.sympatico.ca] proves once again that he graduated at the top his "Cooking for Sharks: 101" class. Minus really liked how Dean made use of a tree diagram to plot his logical progression to the solution.

To solve this problem one has to use logic. First one must write down all possible scenarios that can happen to Janet's hair. Using a tree diagram, one can see all the possible changes that could take place. Knowing Janet started blonde and ended blonde, the Mystery X and Y are Kathy and Larry respectively.

She was Blonde and talked to Kathy that would make her hair Red. Now if she talked to Larry her hair would remain Red. If her hair is red and she talks to Kathy again her hair will be Blonde again.

My question to you is what would her hair colour be if she talked to Kathy and Larry at the same time? Orange?!?! 




We really wanted to give credit where credit is due, but acc [acc@wcnet.org] didn't tell us his or her name. Acc, thanks for the compliment and keeping our fiesty old mascot afloat.



Person X is Kathy and person Y is Larry.


When Janet chats with Kathy, her hair turns Red.
Her color stays the same when she yaks with Larry, but when she returns
to Kathy, it's back to blonde.  


How fun to change hair color just by being social!


Tomorrow if she'd like to go to bed with red hair, she has 3 options:
x=Larry and y=Kathy
x=Larry and y=Mary
x=Mary and y=Larry


Maybe she'll want brown hair, so she can choose one of these:
x=Kathy and y=Mary
x=Mary and y=Kathy


!!!!!!!!!Thank you for your amazing challenge problems!!!!!!!!!!






GP(GParadox) [g_paradox@hotmail.com] offered Minus this scintillating treat, complete with a comment about blondes.



I believe that what happened is Janet went and talked to Kathy, so her hair turned Red then she went to talk to Larry and her hair didn't change colour so she decided that at the end of the day she preferred being a blonde to a redhead cause, after all blondes do have more fun so she went to Kathy and her hair changed from red back to blonde end of story.







Andrew Strachan [~Zero__Cool@rocketmail.com] tempted Minus with a few crumbs. Hey, Andrew, how about sending the entire cookie next time? 



x=kathy y=larry












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