Medal Muddle

New solution

  1. Russia
  2. France
  3. Algeria
  4. Serbia
  5. Turkey
  6. Greece
  7. Portugal
  8. Mexico
  9. Venezuela
  10. Italy
  11. New Zealand
  12. Spain
  13. Romania

 

Original version:

 

In the Olympics, countries from across the world competed against each other. In what order did they finish?

  1. The Australian team came before the team from Norway and after the team from Turkey and Finland, both of which came before the teams from Algeria, Germany and Yugoslavia.
  2. Denmark's team came after the teams from Algeria, Japan, Portugal, Russia and Venezuela.
  3. The team from Venezuela came before the team from Russia and after the team from Portugal and Japan came before teams from USA, Sweden and Russia.
  4. The team from Turkey came before Portugal.
  5. Greece came before Japan, but Algeria and Canada came before both Portugal and Japan.
  6. Japan came after France, Sri Lanka, Portugal and Finland.
  7. The team from Romania came before the teams from Mexico, Greece, Finland, Italy and Canada.
  8. Canada came before the teams from Algeria, France and Greece, but after the teams from Brazil, Austria, Italy and Spain.
  9. Spain came before Turkey and Romania, both of which came after the teams from Brazil and Sri Lanka.
  10. The team from Sri Lanka came before Great Britain and Brazil, the latter of which came after Great Britain but before teams from Spain, Italy and France.
  11. France came before Portugal, who came before Greece.
  12. Germany came after Austria and Mexico, but before Yugoslavia.
  13. The Mexican team came before Yugoslavia.
  14. Algeria came before teams from New Zealand and Norway, as did Italy. Denmark and New Zealand, and Austria came after Turkey.
  15. France came after New Zealand and Norway and the team from New Zealand came before Australia.
  16. Romania came after Austria and Great Britain, the latter of which came before Spain.
  17. Sweden came before Venezuela, who came before the team from Russia.
  18. The team from Mexico came after Finland and the team from Yugoslavia came before the team from Italy.


Original solution:


Congratualtions to Rachel Holland, age 14, John Henry Newman School, Stevenage; to Josh Tattersall, age 10 from Ampthill, Bedfordshire; and to Kerry Skilbeck and Gary Gourlay for solving this one. One method used was to write each team on a separate bit of paper and to go through the clues putting the bits of paper in order. There is a some ambiguity here as the team from the USA could come in 22nd, 23rd or 24th place but all the other teams must be in the given order.

This is Rachel's solution.

It looks much harder than it actually is. The method I used to solve this logic puzzle is: