Saturday, December 12, 2009

The Missing Rum Puzzle

On the bad ship Naughty Nellie, five of the crew had been ordered to stand on desk in a line. Someone had drunk the captain's rum and the culprit was one of the five crewmen. Captain Crutch appeared and hobbled up and down the line.
"I can smell the rum on your breath, matey!" he said to the man in the middle. Big Bob was standing next to and on the right of either Cruel Colin or Evil Eddie, and Dirty Dog was two places from Awful Andrew. Exactly three consecutive places were in alphabetical order. Who had drunk the rum?

(this puzzle is from a great "Brain Busters!" book by Barry R. Clarke)

Please explain your answer on our Family Puzzle Marathon site. Solve three puzzles and get a prize!

4 comments:

Barry said...

Hmm, are you sure there's only one answer? Maybe I'm misreading the part about there being 3 consecutive places in alphabetical order, but it seems that both of these orders fit: CBDEA and EBACD

Maria said...

This is a great first guess.
You are right, without taking into account the alphabetical constraint, both of these options work. As well as some other options, such as for example: AEDCB & ACDEB.
Which of them have exactly three letters in the alphabetical order (such as ABC)?

Barry said...

OK, so when you say alphabetical order, you mean consecutive alphabetical order (i.e. ABC counts but ABD does not, even though both technically are in alphabetical order). Therefore, then answer is ACDEB, where the CDE are in consecutive alphabetical order.

Maria said...

And the Dirty Dog who stands at the middle, drunk rhe rum.
Barry gets his 8th puzzle point!

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