The Question and Answer
The Question
- Agatha, the butler, and Charles live in Dreadbury Mansion, and are
the only people who live therein.
- A killer always hates his victim, and is never richer than his victim.
- Charles hates no one that Aunt Agatha hates.
- Agatha hates everyone except the butler.
- The butler hates everyone not richer than Aunt Agatha.
- The butler hates everyone Aunt Agatha hates.
- No one hates everyone.
- Agatha is not the butler.
- Agatha is not Charles.
- Charles is not the butler.
Who killed Aunt Agatha?
- It was given as a paragraph to Bard, enumerated here to follow Bard's
answer.
- It's the question form of
PUZ001+1
The Answer
From point 4, we know Agatha hates Charles.
Since Charles hates no one that Aunt Agatha hates (point 3), Charles does not
hate Aunt Agatha.
Thus, Charles cannot be the killer since a killer hates his victim.
From points 5 and 6, we know the butler hates everyone not richer than
Aunt Agatha and everyone that Aunt Agatha hates.
Since Agatha hates everyone except the butler (point 4), the butler hates
Charles.
According to point 7, no one hates everyone, so the butler doesn't hate Agatha.
The only person left is Aunt Agatha.
Since we know that Charles and the butler cannot be the killers, and Agatha
is not Charles and Charles is not the butler, it implies that Agatha must
have killed herself.
- The answer is right, but the reasoning is wrong.