Problem: Literary Logic

Result: Success

Question:

Three books have been returned to the library desk: ‘Across the Lake’, ‘One Hundred Degrees’ and ‘One Long Night’. One is a detective novel, one is romance, and the third is science fiction. The three authors are Carter, Davies and Walker. The following are also true:

• Carter’s book has a shorter title than the detective story.
• ‘One Long Night’s author is earlier in the alphabet than the science fiction writer.
• The detective story has neither a ‘D’ in it’s title nor the name of it’s author.

Based on this information, can you deduce the author and genre of each book?

Reflection:

Counting up the letters of the titles, One Hundred Degrees had the most characters so it was not written by Carter.

Walker didn’t write ‘One Long Night’ because he is last alphabetically.

Davies and One Hundred Degrees both have D’s in them so neither of them are associated with the Detective genre.

So I sat there grappling with the permutations: either Walker or Carter wrote the detective story and either ‘Across the lake’ or ‘One Long Night’ was the detective story.

Then for the clue that led me to solving the puzzle which I had overlooked: ‘Carter’s book has a shorter title then the detective story’ therefore saying that Carter did not write the detective story.

Answer:

Across the lake – Detective – Walker

One Long Night – Romance – Carter

One Hundred Degrees – Science Fiction – Davies