Who is Going to Barker Street?
Background Notes
The web sites I saw back in 2000 have all disappeared but the "Who is going to Barker Street" puzzle still pops up plenty of times in web searches. Google Books has unearthed some print versions as well. Here are a few examples:
- Reader’s Digest, February, 1980, page 23.
This is the earliest version I’ve come across and it’s the version I’ve used in this web site. Actually, I haven’t seen the RD version, but it seems to have been reprinted, complete with a cartoon by Lawler, in the March, 1980 issue of the Crown Crier. This is the staff newsletter of the Crown International Corporation (a manufacturer of audio electronics).
A snippet in a coin collector newsletter called Pennywise reported receiving a copy of the Reader’s Digest article and recommended it to readers but declined to reproduce or adapt it for copyright reasons.
Links:
Crown Crier, March, 1980, p. [7]
Pennywise, May, 1980, p. 120 - Hebron Highlights, 1982. This version appeared in the yearbook for a Christian school located in Ootacamund (“the hill station also known as Ooty”), Tamil Nadu, India. This is the Reader’s Digest or “Belaire Business Club” version, “kindly donated by Miss Barton.”
Link:
- John Eric Adair, Management Decision Making (Aldershot, England: Gower, 1985), pp. 21, 166.
Adair is a prolific British author of books on management and leadership. His version, tailored to a British readership, replaces the Belaire Business Club with “a London club.” Bret is also renamed Bob and Burt is renamed Bert, and the passengers live “in” rather than “on” their various streets. Adair used the puzzle again in a later book, Effective Decision Making (2009), pp. 15-16.
Adair writes: "If you have completed the exercise successfully in 20 minutes you have done well; 30 minutes is average, while 15 minutes or less is exceptionally good."
Links:
Google Books snippet view of Management Decision Making
Google Books preview of Effective Decision Making - Newfoundland and Labrador Health Records Association Newsletter, November, 1993, p. 14 and January, 1994, p. 9.
The November, 1993 newsletter contained Adair the puzzle and the January, 1994 issue contained a solution. This example looks like it was taken directly from Adair's book; the solution is slightly condensed but the wording is similar.
Links:
- Marilyn Vos Savant, "Ask Marilyn", Parade Magazine, October 31, 1993.
In this version of the puzzle almost all the names have been changed. The object seems to have been to make it somewhat easier to keep track of the facts.
The deliberate plethora of B's in the other versions of the puzzle has been replaced by a less confusing A-B-C-D-E sequence for the last names (Adams, Brown, Camp, Duncan, Evans), the wives (Alice, Barbara, Connie, Donna, Eve) and the street names (Anchor, Bourbon, Camp, Denver, Elm) while an S-T-U-V-W sequence is used for the first names (Sam, Tom, Ulysses, Victor, Winston).
Oddly, the professions are not part of either sequence but the baker, butcher and barber have been dropped and the professions are now all white collar (accountant, banker, lawyer, stock broker, teacher).
Marilyn Vos Savant, who holds the highest IQ score ever recorded, writes a popular column for Parade that features mathematical and logical puzzles.
Her version of the puzzle was reproduced and cited in Karl J. Smith, The Nature of Mathematics, 12th ed (Cengage Learning, 2011), p.131. This textbook uses the puzzle as a "group research project" (G8) in chapter 3, "The Nature of Logic". "
Links:
Google books preview of The Nature of Mathematics, 12th edition
11 edition research projects from Karl J. Smith's web site - John Hoagland, Critical Thinking (Vale Press, 1999), p. 78.
Once again this is the Reader’s Digest or “Belaire Business Club” version.
Link:
- Centre for Academic Practice, University of Northampton, 07: Thinking Skills, T2: Analytical Thinking, 10-13-2005, p. 7.
Another example of the puzzle being used as a learning exercise. This version of the puzzle identifies Bert rather than Bart as the banker, but the substitution has no important effect on the solution. The wives are referred to as "female partners". The author of the learning package is Sandy Gilkes.
Links:
Learning package containing puzzle
Google Books snippet view of Critical Thinking - Das Taxi Rätsel (DLH.Netboards, posted by Evil_666, 04-07-2003)
A German version of the puzzle. The names are all from the Reader’s Digest version but the setting is “einem Londoner club”.
Link:
- Nick Eve, Elements Facilitation Training web site (10/12/2009)
This version follows Adair's clues and cast of characters with one significant exception. Clue 13 states that the barber lives in Barker Street, not Baker Street, and the title of the puzzle is "Who is going to Baker Street?" The substitution of Baker Street for Barker Street does not affect the solution in any other way.
Eve adds a note of realism by describing the passengers as "incoherent and the worse for drink."
Link:
- Shelley Hazard, Mom’s Taxi (Puzzler’s Paradise).
Who Is Going to Barker Street? belongs to a large family of “logic problem” puzzles that involve four or five groups of interrelated clues that can be solved with the aid of a grid. Mom’s Taxi is an example.
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