" You walk in a room and on the bed there are 2 dogs, 4 cats, one giraffe, 5 cows and a duck, 3 chickens flying above a chair; how many legs are on the floor?"


The answer is 6 (4 from bed 2 from you) or 4 if you don't consider your legs on the floor, but your "feet" on the floor.

Villians answer is 10, claiming the 4 additional legs from the chair is on the floor.

My reasoning is because the chair statement is seperated by a comma in the orginal sentence describing what's on the bed ****and not a period**** the chair is technically on the bed.

Am I correct?

First of all this isn't a math problem and you should ask linguists / English nerds instead of a probability forum.

But my take is, the literal interpretation is that the chair is on the bed. I don't think it's even a grammatically correct sentence, but for Villain's interpretation to be correct it would have to be a grammatically awful sentence.

Under your interpretation, there's a missing "and" before "3 chickens", unless somehow using a semicolon instead of a period makes that unnecessary.

Under Villain's, there is a missing verb! It would have to be, "and 3 chickens were flying..." (but even then, IMO Villain wouldn't win because both interpretations would be correct).

How would you even settle such a bet, though?

Would have an english teacher decide if the chair is on the floor or bed.

The correct response should be "I would have to see it before I give my answer".

Even if the chair is on the ground, it is not clear how many legs the chair has, because not all of them have 4 legs. Not all beds have legs. And for all we know there is a tipped over bucket of KFC with a whole bunch of legs just sitting in the corner.

So I would say that there is no way you could legitimately settle a bet on this.

I think that villain's interpretation is correct and here's why:

If the chair was meant to be interpreted as one of the objects on the bed (and the chickens right above the chair), then the mention of the single duck right beforehand would have been "one duck", since it would only be the next entry in the list of objects on the bed.

But because the wording is "AND a duck", that implies that the duck is the final object being mentioned in the list of "objects on bed" and the flying chickens + chair are a separate grouping.

Yes, it's poorly worded but if the chickens and chair were meant to be included in the list of things on the bed, it's even MORE poorly worded, because it would be so easy for the list to read, "there are 2 dogs, 4 cats, 1 giraffe, 5 cows, 1 duck, AND 3 CHICKENS FLYING ABOVE A BED."

Sure, the chair COULD be on the bed, but there is no reason to assume it either way, other than common sense of what we're used to seeing, although of course common sense is kinda out the window with all these animals in a bedroom. Especially the giraffe. How the **** high are the ceilings in this bedroom?

It's poorly worded as written, but as written, the most rational interpretation imo is that the chickens and chair are not on/over the bed, so the answer is 10.

Only way to find out of course is to track down whoever created this and ask their intention. Then slap them for their lack of clarity.

grunching....

there was a lawsuit in canada involving rogers (probably the largest wireless company).

the lawsuit revolved around the effect on including a comma in the key phrase. i.e. comma vs. no comma changed the meaning of the phrase.

i don't want to get political here... but i see all these NRA types quote the 2nd amendment, but they never make reference to the clause that precedes "no infringement on right to bear arms"... "the no infringment" assumes the conditions (need for well-armed militia?) that precede it.

i took some mensa IQ tests........ they seemed to think there was only one answer.

was i ok to suggest that senator differs from the other 3 words proffered in that it is 7 letters and the other 3 words were 6 letters long or less....... some of my alternative answers were much more relevent than this one. and when i look at the mensa answers to other questions, different length of words seems ok. i mean, they go 2 syllable vs 1 syllable as the key difference