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© Copyright 2003, Jim Loy
Classic Puzzles (originally titled Everyman's Classic Puzzles) by Gyles Brandreth gives this version of Lewis Carroll's (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's) puzzle, the Governor of Kgovjni:
The Governor of Kgovjni wants to give a very small dinner party, and invites his father's brother-in-law, his brother's father-in-law, his father-in-law's brother, and his brother-in-law's father. Find the number of guests.
Clearly the number of guests could be four. But some of them might be the same person. This is the flawed genealogical chart shown in the book:
Capital letters are men, small letters are women, = signs show marriages. The two short vertical lines in bold, over "B = b" and "C = c," are ambigous, as they don't show whether the descendent is the man or the woman. The idea of the chart is to show that all four guests can be the same person. The governor is supposed to be E, and his guest is supposed to be C. But even though there are charts that will work, the above chart isn't one of them. This corrected chart seems to work:
Anyway, assuming that "very small dinner party" means the smallest possible dinner party (with at least one guest), then this chart would seem to produce one guest.
I received email pointing out that the Governor is either royalty or a criminal, because he married his own first cousin. But you should already know that marrying your cousin is legal in Kgovjni. We could simplify the above chart considerably, if we allow further incest, same sex marriages, and adoptions; never mind.
