Journal #6888

4? Its a tiny ass room?

Assuming you start with x (where x > 0) cats (and a dead cat doesn't count as a cat), you place each cat in the room. In the center of the room you place a vial of deadly neurotoxin that will shatter if a certain amount of radiation is detected by a Geiger counter. You then place an appropriate amount of radioactive material next the the vial/counter setup and close the door.

Because radioactive decay is a truly random process, it is unknown whether the vial has broken (killing the cats) or not. Until the room is opened and you see if the cats are dead or not, the cats are in a state of being both alive and dead simultaneously.

So the answer is both x and 0 at the same time. Of course, the correct answer will reveal itself to you once you open the door and take a look. If there are 0 cats, then it means that the deadly neurotoxin was released and the cats have been killed. Because you opened the door to take a look, you have just inhaled neurotoxin and are also dead.

As being dead is not an ideal situation, the desired answer is that x cats are in the room. Because x is the number of cats in the room before the experiment started, the answer can easily be deduced.

Therefore: The number of cats in the room is the number of cats you put in the room.

QED

4. They're sitting on their tails.

Heard this a while ago. >_>

I like all these answers. Especially Penguinboy's.

Penguinboy wins.

The answer is congratulations, you have finally become "that crazy cat lady".

@Penguinboy

Dead cats would still be present in the room would they not?

Also, I stated that there is 1 cat in each of the 4 corners, so you know that there are at least 4 present to begin with.

Penguinboy wins.

And I can think of an arrangement that means there are eight cats, provided each cat has a long-ass tail, and 'in font of' is defined as within a 30-40 degree field of view from where the cat is facing.

Strider wins. A dead cat is still a cat.

32

I got this by thinking like

|>|||>||| =7 now I put that as x4 and I get 32

very vague.:/

Well it's not like my thoughts are just ||||>||| and |<-.->|(or >.<, or ^^ or...) you know...

4.

Why?

Each cat has the other three cats in the other 3 corners in front of him. Each is also sitting on their tail.

I'm taking this one to work, we do riddles all the time

It's either 4 or infinite depending on how you interpret "in front of" and "on the tail". Since riddles are generally bullshit word tricks anyway, I'm going to say 4.

@Bahurs1: 7x4 is 28, not 32.

@Stu: I think he just meant to type 8: 4 cats + 3 more directly in front of each, making 16, then add another 16 more for each new cat sitting on the tail of another cat and you have 32. Or 1 cat in a corner + 3 more right in front of it + 4 more sitting on the 4 that are already there, making 8 cats per corner with 4 corners.

The problem with that logic is that how many cats the word "each" refers to is constantly changing based on the order in which information was given, instead of referring to how many cats there are total, and that's a logical fallacy. "Each" has to be consistent.

A dead cat is no longer a cat; It's some hobo's dinner!

Just ask Schr?dinger.

Congrats to everyone who said 4.

There is one cat in each of the 4 corners of the room. Looking in towards the center of the room, each cat can see the other 3, thereby having 3 cats in front of them. The cat on each tail can be looked at in 2 ways:

1)Each cat is sat on its tail.
2)For each cat's tail in the room, there is 1 cat.

More soon. ^_^

NERDS.

Well I guess I was wrong with thinking 20 then.

you forgot ceiling cat. Ceiling cat is watching Penguinboy do animal cruelty experiments.

I thought Ceiling Cat's interests lie elsewhere?

You know what, let's not even go there.

I'm finding the comprehension of the comments section a lot more difficult then the actual question.

Infinite amounts of many cats? Since there is one on the tail of every single cat lol.

Urby, you #2 explanation is invalid. The wording says "On the tail of each, is 1 cat." Not "For each tail there is one cat." If else, Soup Miner's logic is the correct answer regardless of the err of interpretation. But since infinite is not an acceptable answer unless you're doing calculus or something, then the answer must be 4. Unless the room is equally infinite in size to support the shit-ton of cats, but if it was infinite in size, there would be no corners. But the question says there are corners, so we know the room isn't infinitely huge.

Soup Miner wins.

From my experience with cats, 4 cats is still too many cats.