Q 01/05

Which fictional detective calls his method deduction, although logicians class it as abduction?

A) Hercule Poirot

B) Sherlock Holmes

C) Philip Marlowe

D) C. Auguste Dupin

Answer · why

B) Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes rarely deduces in the strict sense: he spots small details and infers the likeliest story behind them, which logicians call abduction....

Q 02/05

The five-houses Zebra Puzzle is nicknamed after which physicist, said without evidence to have invented it as a boy?

A) Albert Einstein

B) Isaac Newton

C) Stephen Hawking

D) Richard Feynman

Answer · why

A) Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein gets the credit in the legend, but the best-known version ran in Life International magazine in 1962 and names cigarette brands that d...

Q 03/05

Which children's author, an Oxford mathematics lecturer in daily life, also wrote the textbook Symbolic Logic?

A) Kenneth Grahame

B) A. A. Milne

C) Lewis Carroll

D) Edward Lear

Answer · why

C) Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Dodgson, who held a mathematics lectureship at Christ Church, Oxford, for 26 years. Some of the topsy-turvy ...

Q 04/05

Which Joseph Heller novel gave English a name for a no-win trap created by contradictory rules?

A) Fahrenheit 451

B) The 39 Steps

C) Station Eleven

D) Catch-22

Answer · why

D) Catch-22

Catch-22 was nearly Catch-18: Joseph Heller changed the number after another novel, Mila 18, came out shortly before his own.

Q 05/05

Which number-placement logic puzzle got its modern name in the 1980s from the Japanese publisher Nikoli?

A) Sudoku

B) Futoshiki

C) KenKen

D) Hitori

Answer · why

A) Sudoku

Sudoku shortens a Japanese phrase meaning the digits must be single, yet the puzzle was most likely devised by Howard Garns, a retired architect from ...