Solution to: The Masters Plaza

Archimedes has a middle rank between Hassan and You. Then Archimedes has the 2^nd, 3^rd or 4^th rank.

If Archimedes is in the 2^nd rank then Hassan has the first and You have the 3^rd rank. So Einstein can't have a higher rank than Archimedes, so this possibility is false.

If Archimedes has the 4^th rank then Hassan and You are in the 3^rd and 5^th rank, so Galileo and Einstein have the 1^st and the 2^nd rank which is impossible because they eat on tables next to each other.

If Archimedes has the 3^rd rank and Hassan and You have the 2^nd and the 4^th rank then Einstein has the 1^st rank and Galileo has the 5^th, because Einstein is more intelligent than Archimedes, and that is impossible because Einstein is not the head master.

The only true possibility is that Archimedes has the 3^rd rank, Hassan has the ¹st and You the 5^th, because You are not the headmaster. Then Einstein has the 2^nd rank and Galileo the 4^th, because Einstein is more intelligent than Archimedes.

The second step is to list all the possibilities for successive ranks so that they are not next to each other.

Here two possibilities are true as shown in the table but Archimedes (rank 3) doesn't eat on the 5^th table, so the 1^st possibility is not the table number. The 2^nd possibility is true in table and room numbers case, but since Hassan does not eat on a table with the same number as his room number, then the 2^nd possibility is for the table number and the 1^st for the room number. The results are shown in this table:

Copyright © 2005 by Hassan Issa, Lebanon. Published on this website with permission.

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