Postby Akonyl » August 17th, 2011, 1:12 pm
How about
A farmer decides to go to the market to sell some corn and some peas he has. He only has one large burlap sack though: a family heirloom that has been passed down for generations (don't ask). He also doesn't want to mix the corn and peas together, so how does he-- scratch that, that's not the riddle.
The farmer, being a smart man, solved that riddle himself. He filled the bad 1/4 of the way with the corn, took a roll of twine out of his pocket and bound the sack right above the corn, and poured the peas over in the next 1/4 of the sack. Thus, the peas and corn couldn't touch, and he felt like quite the genius.
So, the farmer goes to the market to sell his goods. There, he meets a customer interested in his wares. Curiously, the customer has a burlap sack of his own: Also a family heirloom, and of roughly the same size, shape and color of the farmer's. The customer tells the farmer he wants to buy the corn, but not the peas. The farmer, being a man of business, doesn't want to drop any food on the ground at all (or for that matter, anywhere else other than the burlap sacks), and both men want to keep their burlap sacks in pristine shape. They're also horribly attached to their heirlooms, each unwilling to let the other man hold their family heirloom.
The farmer was smart enough to solve the first riddle, but not the second: How can the farmer sell the corn to the customer, without selling him the peas as well, without mixing the two products, and without damaging or switching sacks with the customer?