the story was posted by Sameer at another place, so I will copy the answers from there to here - this thread is not yet finished. (I copy the story here again, because it is not copied exactly, so that you all have the same story).
17.10.06 Sameer: Puzzle - Princess & the frogs Time for another puzzle, pls do not ask me for the answer as I myself dont have it right now.
Once upon a time...
the princess (she was the youngest daughter of the already mentioned king) went along a swamp in the late morning. Then suddenly a frog jumped out of the water.
The princess thought: "What a nice surprise." and assumed that the frog will jump away when she comes near it. But... the frog did not jump away - in fact while she was going to the frog, the frog also approached her. And then the frog spoke to her: "I am a prince from far far away. A witch bewitched me and now I have to be a frog until a princess will kiss me." But, while the frog was speaking, another frog jumped out of the water - and believe it or not, the frog also told, it was a bewitched prince. And then another frog appeared and so on. Suddenly there were frogs everywhere. The princess who had never seen mystical creatures, couldn't bare this and blacked out.
When she awoke again, it was already noon and she saw all the frogs - hundreds of them. When they noticed, the princess was awake, everybody began to speak. There were so much voices that the princess could not bare this and she shouted: "Quite. I can't rescue you all. Imagine the slime I would have on my mouth. Please tell me, who is the best of you, so I can rescue only him. I mean I also can only marry one guy. But I have 4 pretty sisters, so I could kiss 5 frogs at best."
Of course all the frogs began shouting: "Me. Me. Me...."
Now the princess was in a bad situation, how should she filter out the best frogs (aeh - I mean princes')? How could she test, if the frog would not lie? Imagine the situation of any frog: it would lie through one's teeth to get human again. (And imagine the other frogs just wanting to get a kiss from the pretty princess.) Could assume that the dynamical approach to kiss all frogs would not be chosen by the princess?
What would you advise the princess, how to test for the best frogs? Source: Erkan Yilmaz
Post edited by: erkan, at: 2006/10/22 16:08
Post edited by: erkan, at: 2006/10/22 16:22
The administrator has disabled public write access.
Re:the princess + the frogs
Date: 2006/10/22 16:07
By: erkan
Status: User
Karma: 3
Platinum Boarder
Posts: 98
17.10.2006 Erkan:
Hi everybody,
I must thank Sameer, to post it here, so more people get attention to this.
This is from my website - there I have also two other stories: one with the king itself and one with Hansel + Gretel. Feel free to also have alook at these too.
And about this fairy tale: I do not have any prepared solution for this, because not the solution is important. It is the way how you get there. And there are a lot of ways. But here you can show, how you can apply your testing knowledge to "real" scenarios. And teh best thing is, with this you can start at point A in the discussion and get to everywhere in the testing field.
So, have fun for this - since I created the story, I will step back and have a look on the postings at first.
CU
The administrator has disabled public write access.
Re:the princess + the frogs
Date: 2006/10/22 16:11
By: erkan
Status: User
Karma: 3
Platinum Boarder
Posts: 98
17.10.2006 Pradeep
Hi Erkan,
Thanks for letting me know the mission: Approach and not solution
This is how I would go about it -
I ask myself the following and answer them too
1. From the story can I look that the first frog could have been a prince and was eager to get back to human form but can that frog be false too?
No. Frogs that were not humans were greedy to get a kiss from a princess and the other frogs could have known that the prince can get back to human form only after hearing from the prince-frog.
So this makes me confident that the first frog is a prince.
2. The second frog too popped up and said the same and eventually many frogs came out. Is it easy to conclude that the second frog was not a prince?
Very very tough. In fact the story gives very less information to conclude that the second frog that came out of the pond is a prince or not and moreover as many other frogs popped up it is tough to say whether the second frog is genuine but there is a small possibility that it could be.
I don’t want to conclude anything on the second frog.
My analysis
1.The frogs who were prince were humans too. So this is a clue to me. 2.The witch changed the body of a prince to a frog and not the soul; hence the human soul is still inside. (Assumption and belief)
Wow! I think I have some more clues.
What information is missing?
The information missing is how many princes were converted into frogs.
I doubt whether all that came out of the pond were male frogs and no info how the witch converted the prince.
What skill/knowledge/aspect am I going to use to approach this further
I am going to use human psychology to approach this further.
My definition of good
“Good” according to me is the one who has cultural and traditional values of India. (I have not seen any other culture or tradition so that is my limitation and hence I said India)
My recommendation to the princess to test the best frogs
1. I would ask the princess to announce "I want to kiss 5 best frogs who would marry my sisters"
The frogs that do not volunteer for the kiss are good since the frog (prince) does not want a kiss from someone who is a sister of the girl he is going to marry.
2. I would ask the princess to say to the first frog that popped out “I would marry you after you get back to human form but can I kiss 5 other frogs [prince] too?”
If the frog hesitates then it could be a good frog to marry since no husband would like his wife to kiss someone else’s husband.
Ah! I realize I missed something… What kind of a kiss the princess is supposed to give?
As per the story as the princess says “Lot of slime”, it has to be a French kiss and hence this point holds good.
Ah! As one of the upcoming so called good tester, I can give a very deep answer but would want to stop here since I am happy that I am proceeding well and have the skill to get close to the best possible solution through a few iterations.
The administrator has disabled public write access.
Re:the princess + the frogs
Date: 2006/10/22 16:16
By: erkan
Status: User
Karma: 3
Platinum Boarder
Posts: 98
17.10.2006 Erkan:
Hello Pradeep,
first I must thank you very much for the analysis so far.
I would like to ask for a favor if possible: since I do not know the Indian culture well, could you perhaps write a well-known Indian story for me or for the public (I would like also to include that one)?
In the following I do not like to go into detail, because I would also like to hear all the ideas/approaches here (let's say until friday evening?)
What information is missing?
1. I doubt whether all that came out of the pond were male frogs
probably not, so I will correct this one in the next version. actually hard to believe that without female frogs there could be such a huge population
2. how many princes were converted into frogs.
this is quite interesting, because here there are different scenarios possible: how if it is only 1, 2-4, 5, >=5 prince (actually a prince transformed into a frog) and then we have - lets make a boundary value of - 600 frogs at all.
I will only consider the fact >=5 prince-frogs for a single case (there are other possibilities): a. I could believe that the fact not being transformed to a human again and still being a frog until death could be frustrating and then perhaps the prince-frogs could fight each other and perhaps none of them survives (I mean human nature showed this kind of behaviour) and then how could the princess realize that all the princes are dead and how could we save her the kisses with the normal frogs?
b. It may also be, that one of the prince-frogs may think, that he finds his frog-female of his dreams in the swamp (the swamp is big and there is always a chance) and they live happily ever after - so he would do nothing. and then perhaps if it is only <=4 prince-frogs the normal frogs could come into queue.
3. no info how the witch converted the prince. hehe - the good magicians/witches do not tell their skills unfortunately and so far I could not ask someone having this kind of experience - perhaps we can find someone out here, who has some info on that topic?
I can agree on this one: hence the human soul is still inside. (Assumption and belief) Some people say, that soul is what makes the difference between animals and humans. Anyway - I would also say that the prince-frogs still have a soul.
Ah you selected human psychology, perhaps someone or you can turn this again into another direction?
what I like is that you give the definition of your "good", so that we can all work with this and not that some expectations later on are wrong.
about the recommendations:
The frogs that do not volunteer for the kiss are good since the frog (prince) does not want a kiss from someone who is a sister of the girl he is going to marry.
now we know that there is a maximum number of 600 frogs. so we can here again make some partitioning on the frogs not wanting a kiss. what results can happen then? someone here to try an assumption?
(and how about, if w ehave in this scenario a prince-frog who got into a quarrel with other frogs and got kicked on his ears and is now deaf? perhaps he only jumped out of the swamp, because everybody else did? could we say: ok, that is Charles Darwins natural selection? Or shoudl we help that special frog?)
I would ask the princess to say to the first frog that popped out “I would marry you after you get back to human form but can I kiss 5 other frogs [prince] too?”
oh, you are very bad here: you bring the frog into a bad situation - this is a risky decision - what should he answer? The chances are 50-50. How would the frog calculate his chances (the frog does not know your definition or should we let him know this? also the frog does not know the princess. But perhaps the frog can use as hint, that the princess would not do this if she would not be pure of heart. but what is, if the princess just wants to get them human again and kill them immediately? or what, if the princess is the witch, who just wants to trick the prince-frogs? jesus, there are so many possibilities )
about the "French kiss": here I must disagree - in my imagination a princess does not know this kind of kiss (what can I say I am a romanticist).
until now we considered mainly the prince-frogs, but what about the real frogs?
one viewpoint of the real frogs (the ones not being transformed from human to frog) could be: that the "fake" frogs are somehow an anomaly in their system (the system is the swamp - actually I do not know, if frogs can live near/in a swamp ) because the prince-frog(s) probably will behave different than the natural-born frogs. So, eventually (t)he(y) will be discovered - sooner or later.
so, we have at that moment two parties: I would assume that the prince-frog(s) would be seen as intruder(s) and probably get killed because life is hard and cruel and so on (I mean there is also the slight chance that the normal frogs have mutated to prince-frog-eaters)
So, then we could ask, why did the prince-frogs survive so long? Probably they gave them something, that was worth letting the prince-frogs live. Or the normal frogs did not discover them at all? if so, why?
the other side would be, that the prince-frogs could become kings in the swamp, since they have seen the world and could help the real frogs to build a safe empire for them so that they are protected against enemies. And they are still busy with this in the swamp and the enemies of these new system want to escape and on the run while escaping, they meet the princess and want to fool her (in revenge what the prince-frogs have done to them? )
So, enough crazy minds here from me
I am eager on your ideas/opinions. Please notice, that this above is some thoughts you do not need to repsong now on this (only) - better would be, if we get some story-tellers here to think of some situatiosn and then we could talk about how probable the situations are or what we could do prevent or provoke them.
Thx again Pradeep for starting the first posting. Erkan
The administrator has disabled public write access.
Re:the princess + the frogs
Date: 2006/10/22 16:17
By: erkan
Status: User
Karma: 3
Platinum Boarder
Posts: 98
18.10.2006 Subhransu:
........And then the frog spoke to her:
I am a prince from far far away. A witch bewitched me and now I have to be a frog until a princess will kiss me.
Frog(Prince)'s requirement is only to recover himself from frog to human. He may or may not marry the Princess.
As the Princess is understanding a frog's talk, she should now ask the first frog: Where the witch bewitched him? How he came from far far away? & Which empire the prince belong to?
She can enquire from her empire's spy about the existance of empire as told by the frog. Other than bewitched prince may not know about the existance of any empire outer to frog's world.
The administrator has disabled public write access.
Re:the princess + the frogs
Date: 2006/10/22 16:18
By: erkan
Status: User
Karma: 3
Platinum Boarder
Posts: 98
18.10.2006 Erkan:
very good: Frog(Prince)'s requirement is only to recover himself from frog to human. He may or may not marry the Princess. yes, the princess assumes, the frog would marry her for the help. But who knows this. So, the princess should consider the outcome of this effort. Because if it is a waste of time, why not spending the time on other tasks with more priority? (I mean in the kingdom perhaps there are other creatures, who need help?)
this is also great: She can enquire from her empire's spy about the existance of empire as told by the frog. never trust only one source, if you have access to several. with this info, she can decide - but who knows, how long it takes to get this info? but it is exploratory and she can get more info and build a mental model from this and make better moves in the next minutes.
BUT here I have another opinion: Other than bewitched prince may not know about the existance of any empire outer to frog's world. I mean the frogs can get this info from other ways too: 1. imagine someone passing by and talking about this
2. there is also the possibility that the frog just made up the story ( I just mention this here, because the possibility is not 0)
(3.ok, now I am crazy here: perhaps they have soem newspapers or telegraphs and have a community to share information - I mean there are 600 frogs and they can do division of work. And we know all that there are in the worls more frogs - I think you read all "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and the animals who really control the world)
The administrator has disabled public write access.
(I mean there is also the slight chance that the normal frogs have mutated to prince-frog-eaters)
