Talk:As I was going to St Ives

message: Why on earth would the answer be one hundred thousand? 84.68.215.10 (talk) 19:15, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  One hundred thousand 

message: Could a "In the Media" (or something like that) section for this article be added? I don't want to add it myself, in case there is something wrong with wikipedia quoting TV shows. Here's what I would end up adding:
:In the anime show L/R, a variation of this riddle is used:
:English Version:
:On the way to Ivory,
:I saw women, three times three.
:Each woman fine, nine bags had she.
:In each bag, six dogs and three.
:Each dog, a dozen pups less three.
:Pups, dogs, bags, and women free,
:How many were trekking to Ivory?
:Japanese version (translated):
:On the way to Ivory,
:I saw a man with nine women.
:Each woman had nine bags,
:In each bag, there were nine dogs,
:and each dog had nine puppies.
:Puppies, dogs, bags, and women.
:How many were on the way to Ivory?
Thanks. ih8evilstuff 17:13, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  In Media section? 

message: Whether or not which people were walking to or from the church is So Obviously Apparent if you were contemporary to this rhyme. Speaker is going on a pilgrimage. The man he meets, with seven wives, is not COMING FROM the church, he's having nothing to do with it at all. He's a Muslim! (Albeit a Muslim (Mohammadean?) from a misguided 1700s view of Muslims, but a Muslim nonetheless.) I'm on board with "Different Interpretation". This isn't a math problem.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 143.44.107.217 (talk • contribs).
:A muslim goin to pilgrimage to St Ives? Thats a strench --Armanalp (talk) 07:49, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Muslims (other than Muhammad himself) are only allowed to have four simultaneous wives.  Anyway, in earlier English the word "wife" often meant simply "woman"... AnonMoos (talk) 13:38, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Polygamy is not restricted to Islam - the Mormons, for example, permit it and various other sects and movements have also practised it over history. 62.196.17.197 (talk) 14:14, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Muslims!

message: Anyone know more about the manuscript from 1650BC, such as where it's from. ThereIsNoSteve 00:50, 13 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Manuscript?

message: Mathematical answer: The sacks are not a person or animal and therfor can´t be just in the Multiplication, you can´t meet a sack - so the answer whit 2802 is wrong it is not the number of entities, but of persons the narroter meets -  if the person go to St. Lves meets all of them, then the narrator whil have meet, 2752 persons and animals or if not including the animals and he meet all then he whil have meet eight persons (the man and his seven wives) 0008 persons.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.196.48.159 (talk) 21:31, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  wrong answer 2. 

message: The rhyme itself doesn't specify whether the entourage is going to or from St Ives, so the description of how many cats, wives, et al are going from St Ives is faulty. sheridan 14:44, September 10, 2005 (UTC)
:Besides, polygamy is not recognised in the United Kingdom, therefore six of the so-called "wives" can't really be considered wives at all. --Bonalaw 08:11, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It doesn't say they were all his wives, just that he was traveling with "seven wives".  User:Zoe|(talk) 02:08, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

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text: The article should reflect the 'normal' answer to this riddle and then, as a secondary issue, discuss any flaws, ambiguities etc. so I've split the solution section into 2 to reflect this. Riddles are nearly always ambiguous as they use natural or poetic language rather than strict mathematical terminology. They assume a common social expectancy between the setter and the solver, and this changes through time. For example: "What does a man do standing up, a lady sitting down and a dog on three legs?" The answer is "shake hands" which is clearly placed in polite western society of a hundred or more years ago. Btljs 07:55, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: different interpretation

message: I would like to give a big thank you to the author of the article in it's current state as I found it truly hilarious. Thank you oh so much :D Has brightened my day considerably. Weden 16:35, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thank You 

message: A nice subject, but for the moment the article is filled with WP:OR and is badly in need of references. A substantial clean-up is in order... Nsk92 (talk) 19:33, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I've started to clean it up, but I can't fully view the source it is based on. I'm a little unsure about the section titled solution, as it implies the solution but we don't have a direct source to base that on that anyone can read. So for that reason I'm thinking it should be removed.--221.143.25.19 (talk) 03:17, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  OR, references 

message: I stumbled across this article and was surprised to learn of the solutions given. I was always told and had told it as the answer being one - the man that was met. Whether he had seven wives or cats or anything was irrelevant - it was implied that they were at home, and the man was the only person that was met by the narrator. This then is also dependant on the idea of which direction the man was heading and whether or not the narrator is intended to b included in the solution. [16:52, July 26th 2010 (GMT)].  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.60.168.69 (talk)  
:When I was at primary school, my teacher insisted that the correct answer was 2753 (narrator + man + wives + cats + kittens) - the sacks shouldn't be included in the "How many?" answer, only as part of the calculation.  But this is (for the moment) OR. Tevildo (talk) 22:32, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Another potential solution

message: Under the heading "Answers" one suggested answer is "427: You can't say this isn't the "answer", that's rubbish." Without supporting how one comes to this number, it is "rubbish". Please either add how this number is arrived at or remove this suggestion as an answer.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.83.160.121 (talk) 19:38, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Information included that isn't useful 

message: Guys this is ridiculous! You put so many funny answers there that you forgot to calculate one of them correctly: 2752 is wrong because 1 + 1 + 7 + 7 * 7 * (7 + 7 * 7) = 2753 (YOU FORGOT THE NARRATOR!)
And btw the "Kits, cats, sacks, wives." line might be actually a fraud to make people think the wrong way like "White, white, white. What drinks the cow ?"  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.176.140.119 (talk) 23:50, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yet Another Wrong Answer (a.k.a. "Wrong Answer 3" ^^) 

message: Where did the 2800 figure come from? It looks suspiciously like 7 x 4 x 100. This is not consistent with the riddling rhyme, which instead suggests seven times seven times seven time seven . . . no?
160.253.0.8 (talk) 16:42, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: 2401 is only the total number of kits.  You have to count the cats, sacks and wives as well. — Smjg (talk) 12:15, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  7 to the fourth power equals 2401 

message: It's generally assumed that there are seven kits per cat, and that they are part of the party.  There are problems with this interpretation:
* Is a kit a cat, just the same?  If so, they would have to count in the seven cats in each sack, just the same.  But if each cat had seven kits, then you have to consider the kits' kits as well, and so ad infinitum.  If the kits weren't in the sacks but were left at home, then (aside from the arguably implied existence of infinitely many felines) we don't have the number in the party to worry about.  (Furthermore, we don't even know that the cats were part of the party - we are just told that each wife had seven sacks, not that each wife had the seven sacks (and therefore 49 cats) actually with her.)
* A kit has two parents.  So given seven cats, for all we know they could be three couples and one single parent.  That would make only four sets of seven kits between them.  We just don't have enough information to determine how many kits there really are between the 343 cats.  But if there really are 343 cats, then the minimum number of kits on this basis would be 1204. — Smjg (talk) 15:05, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of kits - more thoughts 

message: People keep removing the "possibly infinite" from the number of mathematically possible answers. According to the quote which is cited in the paragraph above: "at least one, the person asking the question plus anyone who happens to be travelling in the same direction as him or her", then mathematically the possible answers are n:1..∞ You have to start making other arbitrary assumptions to limit it e.g. only counting what is mentioned (why? if I was driving down the M1 and saw 3 lorries going to London would the maximum number of lorries going to London be 3?) Btljs (talk) 08:25, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: My point is that if you either a. accept the trick answer or b. look at it as a mathematical problem. If it is a mathematical problem then there are different solutions depending on what you accept as the a priori knowledge of the universe in which the problem takes place. You take the view that the universe is physically finite (which is debated: here) but mathematics is not bounded by physical reality and neither, arguably is a fictional universe in a story or riddle. In set theory, the set of all things that could be going to St Ives is unbounded: for any number you could always add 1. Any subset of things that could be going to St Ives is a possible solution. Therefore the number of possible solutions is infinite. QED. Incidentally, the "kits, sacks and wives" line is not grammatically part of the question as in "Constantinople is a very long word. How do you spell it?" But even if it were, the riddle could take place in a universe with an infinite number of them. Btljs (talk) 19:38, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

text: It's not a philosophical question & I did use a reference which I quoted at the start of the paragraph, viz. "at least one, the person asking the question plus anyone who happens to be travelling in the same direction as him or her". To my mind that leaves so many possible solutions that it is possibly infinite (OK, "unknowably large" or "undefined" might be a more accurate description). Nobody has added any references to the ones I found in order to change this. Previously, the paragraph just had a list of what people thought were possible solutions, unsourced. Do we really want to go back to that list, even if they are all nicely referenced? Btljs (talk) 08:54, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

text: *I didn't write "philosophical question". I wrote "philosophical fun", with philosophy="love of original research" in Ancient Greek :-). Your "to my mind" is precisely what wikipedia defines as OR. If we meet by a cup of coffee, I can tell you why I think your reasoning is faulty, but wp talk pages are for discussing wp articles and possible sources, not our opinions on the subject. (BTW "unknowably large" is an epistemologic statement, i.e., you are slipping into philosophy after all:-) -M.Altenmann >t 00:45, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

text: *Yes, referenced solutions may be added. I am pretty much sure there is a very finite number of the published ones. -M.Altenmann >t 00:45, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Well there are certainly a finite number of published sources discussing whether there are infinite solutions, but as I put in that statement to discourage people from endlessly (there I go again) adding solutions to the page, it would by counter-productive to add them so I'll leave the somewhat weaker but less controversial "numerous solutions" stet. Thanks for all the philological fun. Btljs (talk) 07:32, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  possibly infinite answers 

message: There are two standard answers to this riddle.  The implied math calculation is merely a distraction.
1.  One.  The narrator.
2.  None.  The narrator changed his mind.  (After and because of meeting this group.)
I figured this out over half a century ago.  I have much more recently run across mention of these two choices on the internet, where the choice is made "depending on your mood".  As this was 5 or 10 years ago I can't give a source, but I think it was on a math or science type of page.
agb  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.233.167.63 (talk) 00:01, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Or maybe one or two of the wives decided to accompany the narrator to St Ives. Or he took a cat. Maybe the narrator was going to St Ives, Cornwall and the others to St Ives, Cambridgeshire and they met halfway. Btljs (talk) 06:54, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Standard Answers 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: As I see it, the almost universally made mistake with this riddle is reading the question as "How many were (there) going to St. Ives?". This seems quite strange to me, as it's very clearly "Kits, cats, sacks, and wives; how many were (there) going to St. Ives?" The fact that the speaker is going to Saint Ives is thus irrelevant, as the speaker is not part of the party of kits, cats, sacks, and wives. Mysha (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 10:21, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  The short and long of it? 

message: The aggregate weight of the cats and kits is problematic. Per Google, a housecat weighs from 8 to 10 pounds. (Ignore your outliers, we're going typical) Kittens range from 7 Oz at 2 weeks to 16 Oz at five weeks. Taking the average of each and multiplying, each sack weighs approximately 100 pounds. And each wife is carrying seven?
If you've ever gone backpacking, forty pounds is a lot of gear to lug, and those backpacks are well designed to bear weight across your hips and shoulders. Military carry even more. But hand carrying sacks in your hands for days long walks between towns? I don't think so. I've done do-it-yourself moves, and lugging a 60 to 70 Lb box from the truck to your new bedroom is not fun; I'm not going hiking with it. 
Also problematic, one housecat is not an unreasonable volume of bulk to carry. The equivalent of ten per sack is, and seventy? Imagine walking to the next town over carrying an empty refrigerator box. Daunting, isn't it? Hence the sacks I guess, but that leads to other difficulties. Too heavy to carry, the sacks are being dragged, and would soon rip from abrasion.
At some point, being stuffed into close proximity to their fellow felines, shuttered in and helpless, these cats are going to be rather agitated. Have you ever attempted to transport a scared cat? The claws are out and moving. In close proximity, they are shredding each other and pitching a fit; the odds are, you would never meet their transporters, because you would avoid the cacophony.
Which may mean that the cats and the kits are all dead, possibly mitigating the weight issue, assuming they were desiccated before transport. 
Or, perhaps the cats and kits are all trussed up to prevent clawing. 
Not mentioned in the puzzle, but what about the food for the cats, assuming they are being transported with the intent of having them arrive alive? If the cats were on their own, they could feed themselves, but stuffed into sacks for days, you'd better have provisions. Water? When do they excrete?
The implied polygamy is the least of the problems with this puzzle, and I'm convinced that the narrator was hallucinating; none of this actually happened. The narrator cannot be trusted, probably never made the trip to St. Ives. So the answer is zero.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2620:117:503F:C7:0:0:0:D061 (talk) 19:12, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  The weight of the cats ... 

message: In the article a hypothetical answer is given for the case where the narrator and the group that was met on the way we're both going to St. Ives. However the sacks were added to the total as if sacks should be counted as individuals when they are inanimate objects. 68.116.197.39 (talk) 14:34, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Presumably because as a mathematical calculation, the listener is expected to include each power of seven.  The riddle doesn't distinguish between living and non-living beings, or between humans and cats—and although it's theoretically possible to give answers based on such distinctions, it's simply not done.  The riddle asks, "kits, cats, sacks, and wives", not "kits, cats, and wives, excluding inanimate objects".  Ultimately, it doesn't matter why the sacks are counted—they always are—unless, as the most common solution holds, nobody but the narrator is going to St. Ives.  P Aculeius (talk) 14:41, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  The why are the sacks counted? 

message: Referencing the last line of the riddle, logically it implies that it is proceeded by "Of the..." Therefore, the correct answer to the riddle is "cannot answer the question/riddle, as there is not enough information given". No info is given to where the 7 wives, cats, etc. are actually going. They may or may not be going to St. Ives, we only know the narrator is going there. But the way it's written assuming the "Of the" prefix I mentioned above refers ONLY to the 7 Wives, etc. Joeylawn (talk) 16:46, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: The ambiguity is part of the riddle, at least as it's usually told.  Therefore, any telling that dispels the ambiguity defeats the purpose of the riddle.  This is already discussed in the article, since the usual understanding is that only the narrator is going to St. Ives, but the listener will overlook this possibility, and instead try to count up those he meets without making a mistake.  And as the article also states, this is not the only possible interpretation, since it is not stated that the whole group is not going to St. Ives either, and the riddle may be descended from earlier versions, such as the Egyptian problem, in which counting was the purpose.  And there are more inventive solutions, though none of them is particularly widespread.  You could of course reply that there is not enough information to give a correct answer, but that's not exactly in the spirit of a riddle, is it?  It's not even an "answer", but instead a refusal to answer.  P Aculeius (talk) 17:56, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another possible answer 

message: "As I was going to St Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits:
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
(Of the) How many were there going to St Ives?"
The last sentence above implies that it begins logically with "Of the". But the only person or thing going to St. Ives is the narrator. Taking account the last two sentences, then the answer becomes "Not enough information given to determine the answer", because the narrator cannot be included with the group in the penultimate sentence due to the "of the". From the information given, the only 'action' involving the group listed was "met". No info is given as to where all the wives, sacks, and cats were going, if anywhere.Joeylawn (talk) 22:57, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: This is basically the same comment you made last time, and it's already covered both by my answer from then and in the article itself.  The ambiguity of the wording is what makes the riddle a riddle, and why there are multiple possible answers besides the traditional understanding, which is "one".  The one answer here that does not fit is "not enough information", since that isn't an answer at all, and is definitely not in the spirit of a riddle as old as the hills.  P Aculeius (talk) 23:44, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

text: "Of the" doesn't make too much sense there.  Do you mean "of them"? AnonMoos (talk) 23:50, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe he means "(of the) kits, cats, sacks, and wives", which added together make 2,187, already stated in the article, but he is still assuming that none of them are going to St. Ives, which is the traditional understanding of the riddle.  His answer is zero, because none of the kits, cats, sacks, and wives is going to St. Ives, and the question excludes the narrator.  This is also already stated in the article.  So it's not clear what we would be doing with the article in any case.  P Aculeius (talk) 00:34, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another Alternative Answer