Clean and Dirty Sisters
Here is a new report of interesting homework solutions from my students.
Puzzle. One day, two sisters decided to clean the old shed at the bottom of their garden. When they finished cleaning, one had a dirty face and the other had a clean face. The sister with the clean face went and washed her face, but the girl with the dirty face did not wash. Why should this be so?
The expected answer: The sister with the clean face saw her sister’s dirty face and assumed her own face must be dirty as well, so she washed it. The sister with the dirty face saw her sister’s clean face and assumed her own face must also be clean, so she didn’t feel the need to wash.
Another student suggested a different but quite realistic answer.
The realistic answer: The sisters’ home ran out of water after the clean sister washed her face, preventing the dirty sister from washing her own.
The other student watched too many sitcoms.
The sitcom answer: The sister with the dirty face purposefully kept her face dirty, so she could show her parents that she did all the work, as she was the only one with dirt on her face.
I asked ChatGPT to solve the puzzle, and, unsurprisingly, it came up with the standard answer. I pushed and got the following.
The ChatGPT answer: The sister with the clean face washed up because she was an Instagram influencer and couldn’t risk being seen dirty, even in her own garden. Meanwhile, the sister with the dirty face was a carefree adventurer who believed dirt was “nature’s makeup.” Plus, she figured that if she waited long enough, the dirt would either blow away or blend into a trendy new skincare routine—”Exfoliation by Shed Dust.”
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