Solve this Riddle if you can

Abinpdas: your solution is incorrect. I am serious, please read your own riddle again and you will see. I will give you the answer tomorrow. :-)

Heh. Good. When Mr S. asked "everyone", he didn't ask himself. That was the missing piece of the puzzle - not stated, but then who would bother asking himself? A good riddle and a fair one.

All right. Socrates, Aristotle, Plato and Zeno all met up for a drink and some cakes. There are 12 cakes on the plate. Socrates takes the first cake and hands the plate around. After that, no-one pays attention to who has what. Later, Aristotle reaches for a cake and sees that they are all gone.

"Socrates," asks Aristotle, "did you have more cakes than me?"

"I don't know," says Socrates. "Plato, did you have more cakes than me?"

"I don't know," says Plato.

"Aha!" says Zeno, revealing that he now knows who had how many. And of course, moments later the other philosophers work it out as well.

Given that all the philosophers are flawlessly logical, know the other three are also flawlessly logical, and would never bother answering a question if they already knew the answer... who had how many cakes?

It's nice to have a good riddle to spend time on.  Some are stupid or have no answer.  Thankfully it turns out you spent time on a good one :)

Ok, before the page is gone, I will show why the solution or the riddle is incorrect. I guess that the solution is intended to be that way, which makes the definition of the riddle incorrect:

The second line of the riddle reads:

The people who attended the party gave handshakes to each other.

Therefor is it not possible that someone gives no handshakes to anyone. That possibility is excluded reading that sentence. If that sentence is changed into

The couples who attended the party gave handshakes to each other.

then is the riddle in line with the solution.

Then is also my first solution incorrect, now it was the correct solution.

Who asks this question?

his horse is named sunday!!!!!!!

His car*.

oops

Assuming Aristotle asks both questions and assuming each person is aware of the number of cakes they've had themselves, here's a guess.  Is it:
Socrates = 3
Aristotle = 2
Plato = 3
Zeno = 4

?

Reasoning is Aristotle woudln't bother asking Socrates if Aristotle had had zero or 1 cake.  So he's had a minimum of 2.

Knowing this minimum himself, Socrates wouldn't say "I don't know" unless he had a minimum of 3.

Plato uses the same logic when answering Aristotle, and answers "I don't know" because he had at least 3.

Zeno, having had 4 himself, and being aware of each person's minimums, now knows the solution.  Because Zeno announces he knows the solution, and because each philosopher is aware of their own minimums, they too now know the solution.

Therefore everyone gives handshakes to everyone else? I think your sentence would make more sense if it read; 'Therefore it is not possible that anyone gives handshakes to no one.'

It seems to me like you undermined your own point.

Socrates. It's a continuation of what he just said. I could have punctuated better.

ETA: Try again now this point has been cleared up. Your thinking is not bad but your solution is wrong.

Ok so I'll leave the beginning the same.  But for the 2nd question, knowing Socrates' minimum is 3, Plato can't answer "I don't know" unless he's had at least 4.  That leaves Zeno with 3 if he immediately knows the answer (and if this is the correct reasoning).

So Soc=3, Ari=2, Plato=4, Zen=3...  Maybe :p

Err... I guess I messed up the minimum thing.  Maybe it's 2, 1, 3, 6  (lol)

Yes.

Aristotle knows Socrates had at least one cake. So Aristotle didn't have 0 cakes, or he would not have asked. So he had at least one.

Socrates had at least two cakes (if he had had only one, he would have said "No", since Aristotle had at least one cake).

Plato had at least three cakes (by the same logic; if he had had two or fewer, he would have answered "No" to Socrates).

Zeno therefore knows that the other three had at least six between them; and he also has enough information to know the exact answer, so he must have had the other six.

Awsome.  At the end (editing my last post) I was pretty sure I knew how to go about it... but my mind was so fuzzy at that point I didn't know if I'd done it right or not.

I thought that I had to use anyone, because the sentence has a negation. Your second sentence might be the proper expression, otherwise will I state it in Dutch. In that language will I not make that kind of mistakes. However, I will take your comment as a compliment that you expect my level of writing English to be that good, that you can make fun of my mistakes. Thanks, :-)

I do hope that you understand what I was trying to say, because I am convinced that your solution is the one intended, but it is incorrect if it is stated that all persons who attended the party gave handshakes to each other.

When you replace people with couples then all makes sense. It is a beautiful riddle, but because of the use of people instead of couples was it impossible for me to change the perspective. I could not figure out how all people had to shake hands, yet created a differentiation in a consistent manner in the number of hands to be shaking by partners of a couple. I was looking to different type of relationships (married, unmarried, widowed, twins, parent child etc..) in order to find a solution. In my first solution I stated that every partner in a couple shaked the equal number of people as his/her partner. Because of that second sentence. I hope that you now understand what I intended to say and that it is a pity that because of an unintended mistake the solution was that hard to find.

What goes up and down but never changes?

He defeated him at boxing/swimming/billiards...

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/off-topic/riddle5