Thinking Out of the Box
Once upon a time, in a little town in Italy a long time ago, there was a merchant who owed a lot of money to a mean old moneylender. The moneylender wasn’t very nice and he wanted to marry the merchant’s daughter because she was very beautiful. So, he made a tricky deal with the merchant. He said he would forgive the debt if he could marry the daughter.
The merchant and his daughter were very upset by this proposal. The moneylender said he would put a black pebble and a white pebble in a bag. The daughter would have to pick one. If she picked the black one, she had to marry him and the debt would be forgiven. If she picked the white one, she didn’t have to marry him, and the debt would still be forgiven. But if she didn’t pick one at all, her dad would go to jail.
They were in the garden, and the moneylender picked up two black pebbles without the daughter seeing. Then he asked her to pick one. What would you do if you were her? What would you tell her to do?
Here are three possibilities:
- She could refuse to pick a pebble.
- She could show there were two black pebbles and call out the moneylender for cheating.
- She could pick a black pebble and marry the moneylender to save her dad.
But the clever girl came up with a different plan. She pretended to drop the pebble on the ground and said, “Oops! I dropped it. But you can see which one is left in the bag, right?” Since the moneylender knew he put two black pebbles in the bag, he had to pretend the remaining pebble was white. So, she tricked him and saved her dad without marrying the moneylender!
The moral of the story is that when we have a hard problem, sometimes we need to think about it in a different way to find a solution.
Once upon a time, in a little town in Italy a long time ago, there was a merchant who owed a lot of money to a mean old moneylender. The moneylender wasn’t very nice and he wanted to marry the merchant’s daughter because she was very beautiful. So, he made a tricky deal with the…