#2             75. TRAIN OF THOUGHT                       
Three passengers named Harris, Ross and Warren are travelling by train from Gisborne to Wellington, their home towns in New Zealand. By strange coincidence, the driver, the guard and one of the stewards have the same three names. The route passes through Napier: the distncae Gisborne to Napier is 215 km, Napier to Wellington 323 km.

(a) Passenger Harris lives in Gisborne.

(b) The steward lives in Napier.

(c) The passenger having the same name as the steward lives in Wellington.

(d) One of the two passengers who live closest to the steward has a weekly income of exactly three times the steward’s wage.

(e) Passenger Ross earns $400 a week.

(f) Crew member Warren is the guard’s best friend.

What is the driver’s name?
HINT 1

Read through the problem, carefully noting each piece of information you can obtain.
HINT 2

Perhaps you can determine where each passenger lives?
SOLUTION

Let us see where each passenger lives. Harris lives in Gisborne by (a). Since $400 is not exactly divisible by 3, (d) and (e) imply that Ross lives in Wellington. Warren lives in Gisborne by (d) and the introductory comment about Napier being closer to Gisborne than to Wellington. Henceby (c) the steward’s name is Ross. By (f) the guard’s name is not Warren. Hence the driver’s name is Warren.

EXTENSION

There is something appealing (frustrating?) about this sort of puzzle which gives a variety of apparently unrelated facts. The secret is to carefully analyze the given information, drawing out the relevant information.