I need help with this riddle?

  • Thread starter Thread starter mark u
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mark u

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You are on an island and there are three crates of fruit that have washed up in front of you. One crate contains only apples. One crate contains only oranges. The other crate contains both apples and oranges.

Each crate is labeled. One reads "apples", one reads "oranges", and one reads "apples and oranges". You know that NONE of the crates have been labeled correctly - they are all wrong.

If you can only take out and look at just one of the pieces of fruit from just one of the crates, how can you label ALL of the crates correctly?
 
Why does it matter, its not like your ever gonna be straned on an island of fruits.
 
throw the crates in the water if it sinks it has oranges, if it floats it has apples and if it sinks and floats it has both
 
Because apples and oranges is mislabelled, whatever fruit you pull out of it is only that fruit, let's say apples. Therefore switch the apple label with apples and oranges label. So there is now one correct crate, the apple crate. Since the third untouched box is mislabelled, all you need to do is switch it with the crate that says apples and oranges, since there are just two crates remaining, each with the labels of the contents of the other.
 
open the first crate, if it is labelled apple & orange and has apples in it then you can replace that. you then know that the one labelled oranges has both in and the one labelled apples has oranges in it. as the other two would be wrong as well you would automatically know to swap them
 
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