You gotta be nuts! Impossible!

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You can solve that math riddle very easily in your head since the genie nicely provides you with multiple choice. (-: Sure, in real life you'd probably have to sit down and jot out the algebra equation, but as long as the genie gave you the answers in advance, you might as well use them.

I kind of wish the riddles in Spellhold hadn't been multiple choice. That made them much too easy, and it would have been more fun trying to figure them out on my own.

 

Djinni's Riddle: Spoiler
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Another way to think of the answer is this:

The first phrase narrows it down to two choices because the first phrase states that "The princess is as old as the prince will be" so we must find choices where the princess is older than the prince. There are only two anwsers that fit this category.

So lets start with the answer which puts the princess at 40 and the prince at 30.

First, lets move the prince forward in time to his 40th birthday. We have to do this because the princess is as old as the "prince will be" so the prince "will be" 40. All things being equal, if the prince is 40, the princess must be 50!

Second, if you add their current ages 40 + 30 which equals 70 and divide that in half, you are left with 35. When the princess was 35, the prince must be 25 because the princess is 10 years older.

Third, let's take half of 50 (which is what age the princess is when the prince is 40) which is 25. (Or to be more accurate 50 is twice the age of the prince when the princess was 35.

In timeline fasion:

25 30 35 40 45 50 Prince
________________________Age Line

35 40 45 50 55 60 Princess


Now we can see on the time line that when the Prince is 40, the princess is 50. At the princess's other age which we calculate to be 35, we can see that the prince is 25. 25 is exactly half of 50.


For the other possible answer:

15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 Prince
________________________________Age Line

25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 Princess

Here we see that if the Prince "will be" 30 the princess has to be 40. At the princess's other age which we calculate to be 25, we can see that the prince is 15. 15 is not exactly half of 40. So this answer is incorrect.

 

Nice logic skills.

Shame it took 4 months to work it out

 

lol, kind of an old post. It's all just a bit of math. I had a score of 780 on the SATI test I believe it was. Maybe those 2 questions I didn't succeed at are the ones you mentioned Big B

 

As a newcomer to the world of BG, I usually just use this board for info, but it's nice to have a question I can actually contribute to.

Basically, this is more of a logic question than a math one. Once you figure out the logic and can "see" the problem, the math is easy.

Consider a time-line of the Princess' age:

---P------C----------F-----------------------

Where C is her current age, P is her age at the point mentioned in the past, and F is how old she will be when the Prince reaches her current age.

So define the difference between their ages as D.

First of all, we know that F-C = D
That is how F was defined

Next we know that F = 2*(P-D)
(P-D) is how old the Prince was at the point referred to in the past. We're told that the Princess will be twice as old as he was at that point

Lastly, we know that the Princess at that point in the past, the Princess was half their current age, so
P = [C+(C-D)]/2

(C-D) is the Prince's current age

Now we have 3 equations, but 4 unknowns, so there is no unique answer. However, we can get a relationship between her current age, C and the difference between their age, D. Substituting the equations into each other finally gives:

D = 4C

This means that the Princess is 4 times as old as the difference between their ages. So if they are 10 years apart, the Princess is 40. If they were 5 years apart, the Princess is 20.

 

Looks like math to me

 

Plasma, take a bow. Thats impressive stuff if your interested in that sort of thing. (And I am).

I'm good at maths, but I'm pretty sure you're better. Although to say that logic isn't maths isn't true. It just doesn't normally involve numbers. Then again no higher maths really does.

 

Screw the stupid problem. Guess, if you are wrong, just kill the stupid Genie. This is a role-playing game, not a math test.

 

That reminds me of something I heard about the first Raiders of the Lost Ark movie. Harrison Ford was supposed to get into a big sword-fight with the villain, but he had the flu that day. He felt like crap, and instead of doing the scene, he pulled out his fake gun and shot the guy! They decided to keep it in the movie.

When faced with obnoxious, smarty-pants genie, start blasting! (Or read the cheat book, like I did

BP