[chongli]

The hard part is not the logic, it's actually figuring out that this is a logic puzzle that needs to be solved by deduction and not a bunch of nonsense with terrible grammar. To borrow your Ode To Joy example, it's like trying to learn to play the piece after the sheet music had been torn and tattered, burned and stained with coffee. Sure, the music is simple once you get past all of the garbage in your way.

The original version of the puzzle (in the Singapore Math Olympiad) presented the dates in a sparse table format. This little bit of symbolic communication makes it much clearer that the answerer is supposed to cross off the dates by a process of deduction, making the puzzle simple to solve.

[baddox]

> The hard part is not the logic, it's actually figuring out that this is a logic puzzle that needs to be solved by deduction and not a bunch of nonsense with terrible grammar.

I am seeing this claim a lot, but I do not understand it. Why would readers assume that a riddle is a bunch of nonsense, rather than something with an objective answer?

> To borrow your Ode To Joy example, it's like trying to learn to play the piece after the sheet music had been torn and tattered, burned and stained with coffee.

I don't see the analogy, because I had no trouble understanding the wording of the puzzle. I thought it was extremely clear and precise. To use your analogy, I feel like I'm looking at a pristine professionally-notated piece of sheet music while everyone else is saying it's torn and tattered.

[chongli]

I am seeing this claim a lot, but I do not understand it. Why would readers assume that a riddle is a bunch of nonsense, rather than something with an objective answer?

Different people carry different assumptions with them throughout their lives. Not everybody approaches a logic puzzle with the mental preparation of solving logic puzzles. They aren't looking to analyze the statements and they don't carry the assumption that the statements carry just enough information to solve it. Instead, they might expect some trick or play on words to give a "stupid" answer.

because I had no trouble understanding the wording of the puzzle

But you do have trouble understanding that other people might be different from you; with different experiences, assumptions, etc.

[andrewprock]

"But you do have trouble understanding that other people might be different from you; with different experiences, assumptions, etc."

In essence, this is the true test of the puzzle; not whether you can solve the intended puzzle, but whether or not you can muster sufficient social and analytical empathy to work with others when your assumptions turn out to be incongruent with the intended assumptions.

[sukilot]

If you learned to play piano in a different notation, Western clef note sheet music would be cryptic. Not everyone has learned the same language of expressing precise concepts.

[baddox]

If someone is a non-native and less than fluent English speaker being presented with this problem in English, then I think your analogy holds. If they are fluent English speakers, however, then I think the inability to translate simple English statements into logical constraints is a failure to solve the logic puzzle itself, not a different type of failure indicating that the problem description is "cryptic" or confusing.

[sukilot]

Please don't confuse a different country's dialect of English with "terrible grammar"

[apricot]

Is "Yesterday I eat noodles" considered grammatically correct English in Singapore?