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That's cute, but it's driving me crazy, I guess I'll have to sit down and solve it to figure out how it's meant to be clued, assuming it's not just a red-herring entirely.

by xnorswap5 hours ago|

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Right, this is based on pen-and-paper working, so I could be wrong, but I think it's a red-herring, the set of "clothing" seems to be:

white, blue, yellow, and is otherwise undefined.

But we know from [1], [2], [4], [5] and [11], that the order must be:

A, B, C, D, E or A, B, E, D, C.

Which makes C either the older 12 year old or the 35 year old.

The key this is that D can't be a 12 year old without A being in slot 2, but A can't be in slot 2 because slot 2 is South Africa and A is Morocco.

Trying to reach the shoes + Vanuatu clue is a complete waste of time, paying any attention to shoes or clothing is a waste of time, it feels like there ought to be a way to narrow it down to one of those two configurations, but the clothing is too ambiguous, the shoes end up irrelevant.

What a frustrating puzzle, where half the clues are seemingly redundant.

by retsibsi1 hours ago|

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I independently reached the same conclusion, and I think we must be right, because the thing I thought I might have missed was some way in which the shoes/clothes are actually relevant and rule out one of those orderings. But our answer matches the one in the paper, and I don't see a mistake we could have made to reach the right answer in the wrong way.

I guess they were not optimising for a satisfying solving experience! (I'm not sure what 'expansion' means in this context, but it sounds like maybe the 'expansion strategy' referred to in the paper involved padding out problems with red herring premises?)