Riddle me this

[thebitterguy]

As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks, each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits: kits, cats, sacks and wives,
How many were going to St. Ives?

Comments

[elizard100.livejournal.com]

Just you. :)

Obviously I cannot choose than answer in front of you!

[nottheterritory.livejournal.com]

Well statistics were unavailable on initial inspection, the website was glossy enough (http://www.stives-cornwall.co.uk/) - we have to assume several thousand a year...

[anidada.livejournal.com]

You HAVE heard this one before, right? Right?

[athelind.livejournal.com]

One.

[freeport-pirate.livejournal.com]

Did you just watch Die Hard with a Vengeance recently?

[gurudata.livejournal.com]

Hiho,

You and everybody else on the plane.

Cu,
Andrew

[thebitterguy]

Mayyyyybe.

[jesshartley.livejournal.com]

This has always bugged me.
I know the standard answer is "Just one" because it says "As I was..."

But if you meet someone on the way there, it doesn't necessarily mean they aren't going there too, does it? I mean, there's about a 50/50 chance that if you meet someone "as I was going to" somewhere that they've either come from there or are going there as well. "As I was going to Miami, I met Mickey Mouse" doesn't preclude the possibility that Mickey is on his way to Miami too.

So, the answer truly is "insufficient information given in this problem to determine the answer."

Don't even get me started on the fact that he didn't necessarily meet all the wives, sacks, cats and kittens. Just because the guy had seven wives doesn't mean he was daft enough to travel with all of them at once. The Norse were smart enough to know that if a man has three wives, he'd better be rich enough to have three houses, because two wives under one roof is (often) trouble.

[faerydragonet.livejournal.com]

just you.

[racing-girl.livejournal.com]

LMFAO!!! Well said...let's this puts an end to these silly riddles...

[bandersnitch.livejournal.com]

You can see the trailer for DieHard 4 Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F9eCSav9x0)

Just in case you were wondering.

[absinthe-dot-ca.livejournal.com]

I think the original usage of the word "met" implied a head-on meeting, so if you met someone, they were headed the other way.

[papajoemambo.livejournal.com]

That would be "one".

There's a Sesame Street segment built out of this lil riddle - a nice one with Ernie and Herbert Birdsfoot, I think.

[atomiks.livejournal.com]

Less the wives and the husband, there were
7 wives x 7 sacks x 7 cats = 343 cats
343 cats x 7 kittens = 2,401 kittens

In total, the riddle contains 2,744 cats and 9 humans, for a total of 2,753 participants.

But, I believe that only one of them was going to St. Ives.

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

one

[eviltofu.livejournal.com]

None because St Ives doesn't have penguins.

[thebitterguy]

Bing! You got it.

Re: Obviously I cannot choose than answer in front of you!

[thebitterguy]

I'm just getting started!

[thebitterguy]

But of course.

[thebitterguy]

Oh, God. He isn't nearly outgunned enough. I declare, in the name of holy Kib0 and absence of evidence, that it will suck.

[thebitterguy]

Exactly!

[thebitterguy]

Hah! Little do you know, St. Ives is only accessible by SEA!

Or something.

[thebitterguy]

Especially because a guy with seven wives, each with seven sacks, with seven cats in each sack, and each cat having seven kittens would probably be travellng slowly.

And what are they doing with all those cats, anyway?

[thebitterguy]

Exactly. Very good.

[thebitterguy]

I just want to know what they were doing with all those cats. It's hard enough corralling two, much less twenty-seven hundred.

[thebitterguy]

Exactly. You have sussed, as it were, the solution.

[thebitterguy]

That's the one.

I can't recall the SS bit. The show does seem a natural for it.

[atomiks.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the husband's last name was Stradivari...

[thebitterguy]

Or a tennis racket manufacturer.