Going to St Ives

Resources

Going to St Ives (worksheet)

Going to St Ives (PowerPoint)

Teaching notes

This is such a well-known puzzle that it is often oversimplified. As far as the solution goes, it is a good way to make the point that all of the information in a question must be taken into account before a solution can be achieved (though some information may not be relevant).

Solution

Only the narrator is actually going to St Ives (the wives, cats, etc are all met on the way, but the question never says where they were going).

Extension

Ask students to try and write their own trick question in the form of a poem.