Where is the guest?
Aditya Rishi

Music is the pleasure the human soul experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting. — Gottfried Whilhem Leibniz (1646-1716)

NINE single rooms — a room for each —

That was two weeks ago. Since then, many of you have been trying to figure out how the host did it. "The host has adjusted nine travellers not ten; the tenth traveller is from room A. He has counted twice the second traveller and left one traveller unadjusted," says Amarjit Kaur.

"As you have mentioned in the last stanza of the poem that there were 9 single rooms and 1 for each, it means that there were, actually, 10 rooms. Nine were single rooms and the 10th was a common room, where the 10th person was lodged," says Bharat Bhushan Singh Mittal and Hemant Singh Mittal of Sardulgarh.

"The landlord had put 1 and 2 in room A, 3 in room B, 4 in room C, 5 in room D, 6 in room E, 7 in room F, 8 in room G and 9 in room H. In room I, he had not put the 10th man, but he had put the second man in room I," says Harinder Singh of Panchkula.

"I was much amused to read the problem and a bit puzzled, too, at first, but then a quote attibuted to Paul Dirac (1902-1984) came to my mind: In science, one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before, but in poetry, it’s the exact opposite. So, it was just a trick of words, as there was no tenth man in Room A, so, he did nothing with the people in Room A and placed the actual tenth in Room I; and two men shared Room A. The other dreadful possibility that came to my mind after reading the other poem is that the host might have eaten or done to death the actual 10th person," says Dr Tarsem Lal of Khanna.

"He locked the tenth in the safe in room I, since safe is a kind of room," says Ashok Sharma. Many other explanations were far more amusing, but those were also far more unprintable.

Ten Travellers’ appeared as an untitled poem in Current Literature in the April of 1889. No author was credited. This ninth stanza exposing the fallacy is attributed to John F. Mooney:

Amarjit Kaur will prove to be a better host anytime because she doesn’t change her mind like Dr Tarsem. The Walrus and the Carpenter was given to distract all. (Write at The Tribune or adityarishi99@yahoo.co.in‘