Life is a Test: A Series of Pony Logic Puzzles

by Brony_of_Brody

The Answer 38

"Are there fifteen total apples in the cell?"

How long did it take you to realise it? Perhaps a more self-reliant pony would try to think of a question that would allow them, and ONLY them, to solve this puzzle. But if you're being called to solve a Friendship Problem, you need to trust in others to see a puzzle solved, and that means finding a question that will allow at least one of you the means to guess the number.

Since we know we cannot have empty cells, nor cells with the same two amounts of apples, the lowest number of apples we can have is six (1, 2 and 3) and the largest total is twenty-four (7, 8 and 9).

From Applejack's first question, we know there are an odd number of apples, and Rainbow Dash's question revealed it isn't a prime number. Eliminating all even numbers plus prime numbers only leaves us with three possible totals: nine, fifteen, and twenty-one.

So if you asked the above question, here's how things could play out:

• 1.1 If the answer is yes, great! Any one of you can guess the answer is fifteen.
• 2.1 If the answer is no, then there are either nine apples, or twenty-one. Seeing that your cell has five apples, you know that one cell has three apples, while another has one. Assuming both Rainbow Dash and Applejack are following logic, whoever can see only one apple in their cell must deduce that there are nine apples, since you can only have a maximum of eighteen apples with one cell holding a single apple. Meanwhile, whoever can see three apples knows there can only be a maximum of twenty apples, so they too must deduce there are nine apples.
• 2.2 In the event there are twenty-one apples, following similar logic, one cell will have nine apples, the other will have seven. They should then deduce that there are more than nine apples between the three cells and thus conclude there are twenty-one apples in total.