Is It Important to Get Only One Possibility While Solving Puzzles?

Yes, It is important to get only one possibility while solving logical puzzles. Any logical puzzle e.g. Sudoku, Kakuro, etc should have a unique solution. If a puzzle does not have a unique solution, then it is not possible to solve that particular puzzle logically.  Multiple solutions to the particular puzzle mean that there are different paths to solve that puzzle. So it cannot be solved logically. 

The puzzle which appears in the competitions like World Sudoku Championships (WSC) or World Puzzle Championships (WPC) should always have a unique solution. It means that there should be only one possible solution. If a Puzzle is having more than one solution then that particular puzzle is considered a broken puzzle. There are many instances in the WSC and WPC where the full puzzle round has been canceled because a particular puzzle in that round does not have a unique solution. 

For a logical puzzle, if they're more than one solution then we need to guess in the puzzle to get the one particular correct answer.  At one point in time, the logical path will break and we need to go in different directions while solving that puzzle.

I will always prefer a logical puzzle to have a unique solution otherwise solving the puzzle will not be enjoyable. Now it does not mean that any Puzzle should always have a unique solution. On this website, there are many Maths Logic Puzzles where there could be a different answer if the perspective of thinking is different. Similarly, there are many picture puzzles in which the answer could not be unique. The answer to a particular puzzle will depend upon your thinking pattern. Let's solve more such puzzles where there are multiple solutions to a puzzle.

Test Your Creative Thinking with the Picture Puzzle

This Picture Puzzle is an Odd One Out Puzzle. It is an open-ended puzzle. It means that there are many different solutions to this puzzle depending upon your thinking. In this One One Out Picture Puzzle, you are shown some digits. Most of the digits follow a certain rule and only one of the given digits does not follow the rule which makes that digit Odd One Out. Can you find the Odd One Out? 

Try to be creative and come up with as many different answers to this puzzle as possible. I have come up with 5 different answers and logical conclusions to solve this puzzle. Let's see many of the different perspectives you can think out?

Can you find the Odd One Out?

Now, this is an open-ended puzzle that does not have a unique solution. Depending upon your perspective to solve this puzzle, you can have any digit as Odd One Out in this puzzle. Now If I have to answer this puzzle. I can make any of the given digits as Odd One Out e.g. 

1. 8 is One One Out because it is the only digit for which the cube root leads to a whole number. 

2. 9 is the Odd One Out because it is the only digit for which square root leads to a whole number.

3. 7 is the Odd One Out because that is the only digit among the given digits which can be formed using only the straight lines.

One can get some out the box reasoning to get the Odd One Out which can be applicable to any set of given numbers e.g.

4. 2 is the Odd One Out as it is the only digit in the group that is less than 3. Similarly

5. 9 is the Odd One Out as it is the only digit in the group that is greater than 8. 

Anyway, let's ignore these generic answers and move one to find another perspective to solve this puzzle.

6. 8 is the Odd One Out because it is the only digit that reads the same when it is turned upside down.

7. 6 is the Odd One Out because it the only digit that can we can with the multiplication of other two digits (2 and 3) in this group.

8. 8 is the Odd One Out because it is the only digits that can be obtained by the sum of the two numbers from the given set in exactly two different ways from the given set of digits. i.e. 2+6 and 3+5

I will stop here. There could be endless different solutions to this puzzle. Were you able to think of a different solution to this puzzle? If yes, please write down your answer along with a logical explanation in the comments.

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