i think that only matters if it's possible nobody is the superstar? the way you worded it, i assumed he must exist.

even then, it sounds straight forward?

first loop: ask everyone if he knows nobody. if you come across nobody or a second person, then superstar doesnt exist.

second loop: we found exactly one person who knows nobody. ask everyone else if they know him.

This post was edited by carteblanche on Mar 15 2016 06:28pm

That's not O(n) though is it? I suck at big O notation. It also becomes a question of what if multiple people don't know anyone. You'd have to do a sub iteration asking people for each N people who don't know anyone.

This post was edited by AbDuCt on Mar 15 2016 06:32pm

it's a constant factor, so yeah it's O(n)

I see. Shows how much I know about O notation.

as soon as you find a second person who doesn't know anyone, you know neither is the superstar, and more broadly, you know there is no superstar. it's a contradiction for "everyone knows the superstar"

This post was edited by carteblanche on Mar 15 2016 06:45pm

Yea I guess you got me there. I hate word problems.

Yes but I'm not tom so how do I find out how old bobs daughters are if I don't know the address?

do you need to know it? or is its mention significant enough?

There's only one address really that fits that criteria, even if you don't know it, you can write a function to check a range of addresses against those requirements.

Tom knows the address. Which means the sum of the ages doesn't help him. This means that off all the possible sums of x y z, the answer will be selected from the subset of summations which are not distinct. From these selections, Bob points out that you can tell who the oldest is by her hair color. Meaning the highest number of the set is distinct. The oldest is not a set of twins, because Bob says his oldest singular.
1 1 36 = 38
1 2 18 = 21
1 3 12 = 16
1 4 9 = 14
1 6 6 = 13
2 2 9 = 13
2 3 6 = 11
3 3 4 = 10

And now you have two candidates: 1 6 6 and 2 2 9. But we already know that the oldest is distinct. So the answer is Bob has 2 year old twins and a 9 year old.