My father’s all-time favourite joke always made us roll our eyes. It went like this:
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God said to Moses, “Come forth!” But Moses came fifth and lost the race.
Well, to be honest it always made us laugh. Maybe you had to be there. Anyway, a certain other Moses entered a 100 metre race in his school sports meet, along with his friends Gaurav, Yashasvi, Jayashree, Farhan and Rehana. Well after it was done, the lazy local reporter assigned to cover the meet turned up. He ran into Mr Ranade, the mathematics teacher.
“What happened in the 100 metres?” asked the reporter.
In no mood to make things easy, Mr Ranade said: “Look, I’ll give you a few clues. You work out how they finished.”
These were the clues:
1) Three runners finished between Gaurav and Yashasvi.
2) One finished between Yashasvi and Moses.
3) Jayashree came second.
4) Gaurav and Farhan were neck-and-neck all the way to a photo-finish. The judges decided that Gaurav had just pipped Farhan to the line.
Question: In what order did the runners finish the race?
Scroll down for the answer.
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Answer: Clue #1 tells us that Gaurav and Yashasvi took either 1st and 5th, or 2nd and 6th places (not respectively).
From that and clue #2, we know Moses was either 3rd or 4th.
Clue #3 rules out 2nd for Gaurav and Yashasvi - they were 1st and 5th (not respectively).
Clue #4 says Gaurav finished just ahead of Farhan - i.e. they took 5th and 6th.
Thus: Yashasvi, Jayashree, Moses, Rehana, Gaurav, Farhan. Moses came forth and took third.
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