Official Solution: Bunuel
For each of the following descriptions, select
Possible if the description could possibly apply to a guide currently employed by the All World Social Touring Company. If the description cannot possibly apply to any of the company’s current guides, select
Not Possible.
Each guide speaks either
one or
three of the listed languages. Therefore, a description is possible if at least one single language or set of 3 languages satisfies it. If no such language or set exists, the description is not possible.
• Ineligible to guide any tour that visits an architecturally significant Muslim mosque The tours in Albania, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, and Turkey visit a Muslim mosque. To be ineligible for all of them, the guide cannot speak any language that qualifies for any of these tours. This rules out Albanian, English, Italian, Azerbaijani, Russian, Turkish, and Kazakh, leaving only Mandarin.
A guide can speak only Mandarin. Therefore, this description is
Possible.
• Ineligible to guide any tour that visits an architecturally significant Buddhist temple, but eligible to guide any of the other tours The Mongolia, Russia, and Tibet/Xinjiang tours visit a Buddhist temple. Being ineligible for all three rules out Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Mandarin, and Russian.
But the Kazakhstan tour requires Kazakh or Russian, and both have been ruled out. Thus, such a guide could not guide Kazakhstan, which is one of the other tours. Therefore, this description is
Not Possible.
• Eligible to guide exactly five of the company’s tours No single language qualifies a guide for more than 4 tours, so a guide satisfying this description must speak 3 languages.
To check whether this is possible, look in the Qualifying Languages table for three language rows that together contain shaded cells in exactly five destination columns. Equivalently, the combined three rows must leave exactly four destination columns unshaded.
There are several sets of 3 languages that satisfy this condition, including:
Albanian, Azerbaijani, Turkish
Azerbaijani, English, Italian
English, Italian, Mandarin
English, Italian, Turkish
For example, Albanian, Azerbaijani, and Turkish together qualify a guide for exactly five tours: Albania, Azerbaijan, Kosovo, Russia, and Turkey. Finding any
one valid set is enough to establish that the description could apply to a current guide.
Therefore, this description is
Possible.
Correct answer: Ineligible to guide any tour that visits an architecturally significant Muslim mosque
"Possible"Ineligible to guide any tour that visits an architecturally significant Buddhist temple, but eligible to guide any of the other tours
"Not Possible"Eligible to guide exactly five of the company’s tours
"Possible"