Did you solve it? The logic question almost everyone gets wrong

The results are in and yes, most of you got this one wrong. Here’s why.

 Looking at married people.

Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married, but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

A: Yes

B: No

C: Cannot be determined

The correct answer is A.

Before I get to the explanation, a few words on why I set the question. I wanted to test if it really was the case that more than 80 per cent of people choose C. Well, the results are in, and with more than 200,000 submissions, this is how you voted:

A 27.68 per cent

B 4.55 per cent

C 67.77 per cent

More than 72 per cent of you chose the wrong answer. Maybe it’s an exaggeration to say that “almost everyone” gets this question wrong but the vast majority of you did! (And that’s not accounting for the fact that many of you who took part are seasoned readers of this puzzle column, and were warned that this question was not all it seemed.)

Why is this question so tricky? It is because it appears to give you insufficient information. Anne’s marital status is not known, nor can it be determined, and so you make the inference that the question posed cannot be determined.

In fact, Anne’s marital status is irrelevant to the answer. If she is married, then a married person is looking at an unmarried person (Anne is looking at George), and if she isn’t, a married person is looking at an unmarried person (Jack is looking at Anne).