Baseball Pennant, by George Summers


Fumbling through my library I stumbled on
_New Puzzles in Logical Deduction_
by George J. Summers. I riffled through
the book, deciding that the puzzles were
challenging, but more tedious than interesting.

I don't normally write in books, especially
in ink, but at Puzzle #48 (out of 50) I
found I'd left myself some notes: The
puzzle was "Hard" yet two of the 6 clues
were "Unnecessary"!

I'll give the puzzle and the 4 needed clues
(along with the 2 "unnecessary" clues rot13).
(I've rewritten the puzzle slightly: it had
a useless complication that needs to disappear
when a redundant clue disappears.)

(George Summers doesn't mention that baseball
games do not have tied final scores. I don't
know if he overlooked that non-Americans might
not know that, or just noticed that absence of
tied scores can be deduced from the clues.)

#48 The Baseball Pennant

(Summers describes an (irrelevant) playoff scenario.)

1. Each pair of four teams plays a game; runs
scored by each team in its games are as follows
(in some order):
Sexton 1 - 3 - 7
Treble 1 - 4 - 6
Ulster 2 - 3 - 6
Verdue 2 - 4 - 5

2. Each team won a different number of games.

3. Gur fpber sbe rnpu tnzr jnf qvssrerag sebz
gung bs nal bgure tnzr.

4. The greatest difference in runs scored by
two teams at one game was 3 runs; this difference
occurred only once when the team that lost the
greatest number of games lost by 3 runs.

5. Two teams scored the same number of runs during
the first round and two teams scored the same
number of runs during the second round. (A "round"
consists of all the teams playing games simultaneously.)

6. Ehaf fpberq va gur guveq ebhaq vapyhqr gjb
qvssrerag bqq ahzoref naq gjb qvssrerag ahzoref.

Determine the scores in each of the six games.


Have fun.
James Dow Allen

.

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