Saber Forum

An oldie, but a goodie.

You are sat on a riverbank with a cat, a mouse and a piece of cheese. There is a row boat next to you, but you can only take one one thing at a time. How do you get everything across to the other side without the cat eating the mouse or the mouse eating the cheese?

And before some smartass tries to be clever, you cannot dismantle the boat to build a bridge!

Take mouse across the riverbank first, come back and pick up the cat to take it across, drop off the cat,  and pick up the mouse to bring back to the original spot. Then drop off the mouse at the beginning, pick up the cheese and drop it off with the cat across the riverbank. Come back and pick up the mouse

My solution: eat the cheese (washed down with some nice wine), release the mouse into the wild and take the cat across the river and give it a good home, because cats are cool.

Fair enough, lol.

I have two answers.

1) Eat the cheese, the mouse and the cat, then go across.
or
2) Bring the cheese. The mouse will follow the cheese and get across on their own (or maybe climb into the boat, in which case, you are not bringing them, they are bringing themselves), and the cat will follow the mouse (using the same method as the mouse did for the cheese).

I'm going to be a smartass in a different direction:

Since the piece of cheese couldn't weigh that much and a mouse is small, put the cheese in your pocket, the mouse on your shoulder, and the cat in the boat and row everything across at once. ;D

This puzzle usually has to do with weight or size issues of the capacity of the boat.

not really. The rule states you can only take one at a time. Because river magic.

Well knowledge is power, so screw magic.