How to Solve the World’s Hardest Logic Puzzle
by Brian Gallagher
Oct 23, 2016
3 minutes
While a doctoral student at Princeton University in 1957, studying under a founder of theoretical computer science, Raymond Smullyan would occasionally visit New York City. On one of these visits, he met a “very charming lady musician” and, on their first date, Smullyan, an incorrigible flirt, proceeded very logically—and sneakily.
“Would you please do me a favor?” he asked her. “I am to make a statement. If the statement is true, would you give me your autograph?”
Content to play along, she replied, “I don’t see why not.”
“If the statement is false,” he went
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