I blooming hate word games too
Actually what I had in mind would be something from other sciences like chemistry, or biology.
Of course it depends what Lam wanted to demonstrate in this thread. If he wanted to show that application of accumulated knowledge was a more efficient method of reasoning than 'common sense' then not only has made the point already (Riverrat refused to use the accumulated knowledge that Lam supplied, and struggled
* ), but it could be re-emphasised by providing other examples.
Take a classic Mendelian experiment crossing tall and short in-bred pea plants:
What would be the resulting ratio of tall/short plants when you cross tall and short pea plants?
What would be the resulting ratio of crossing two individuals from that first generation of hybrids?
I'm prepared to say that without the knowledge of genes and dominance and recessiveness then it would be nigh-on
impossible to get the answer to that question by common sense alone.
Naturally if the point is to set problems and provide all of the information needed to solve them then the above problem is childs play (that's biology for you), and not really worth discussing to any length.
Of course, I would have had no problem with your puzzle but (gosh darn it) Jar went and did it (spelling mistakes permitting) before I got a chance
* No offense meant to Riverrat on this point, I'm relatively sure he could have beaten me to the answer if he had used the equations provided