Round-table age puzzle tests the limits of truth-telling
Original report:
A Guardian puzzle column published on 12 October 2026 presented three circular seating challenges devised by Daniel Griller. Readers were asked to find the largest and smallest possible numbers of truthful statements as participants compared their ages with those of others around the table.
The Guardian’s 12 October 2026 puzzle column featured three age-comparison problems credited to puzzle-book author Daniel Griller. Each places people of different ages around a circular table, facing its centre, and asks for the maximum and minimum numbers who could be telling the truth. The groups contain three, seven and 999 participants.
For the smallest group, each person claims to be younger than their left-hand neighbour. The seven-person version adds a comparison with someone two seats to the right. At the largest table, participants claim to be younger than the person three seats left and older than the person three seats right. The column promised solutions at 5pm UK time that day; none appear in the supplied text.
The exercise belongs to a Guardian puzzle series that the columnist says has run on alternate Mondays since 2015. Its progression changes both group size and the comparisons each participant makes, giving readers six related questions about age ordering. The supplied article presents the challenges rather than an explanation of their mathematical solutions.
Source
the Guardian — 12 October 2026
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