Elric said:
Edit: Montez, I thought that too, but it didn't seem to make any sense to me... but now that you say it... mmh... by the way, circles can be inscribed (don't know if this is correct) in trapezoids? Does that make them both yellow and red? Am I saying something extremely dumb?
I suck at this, but I'll try to explain the logic anyway.
1) Triangle - Red
2) Circle - Yellow
3) Trapezoid - ???
So the most obvious thing is to find a relationship between the three givens. A circle has no obvious relation to a trapezoid. If you were to slice up a trapezoid though, you could make it into triangles. So you could say that a trapezoid is made of triangles, and since triangles are red a trapezoid must be red.
1) Triangle - Red
2) Circle - Yellow
3) Trapezoid - Red
But that doesn't seem to make sense. Where does the circle fit in? So you look at the relationships again.
Triangle, Circle, Trapezoid. The first thing that comes to mind is that two are basic shapes and one is a complex shape. So what basic shapes is a trapezoid made of? It can't be just triangles, because then the color would be red and we've already decided that thar doesn't make sense. How about a square and one or more triangles then? A square is considered a basic shape. You could argue that a square is just two or more triangles, but then it's commonly known that people refer to circle, square, triangle as the basic shapes. Can't hurt to try.
1) Triangle - Red
2) Circle - Yellow
3) Square - ???
4) Trapezoid - ???
So now to the colors: Red, Yellow, ???, ???.... The most obvious thing to do would be to assume that since the shapes went basic, basic, complex, that the colors do the same thing. Therefore the color of the square would be a basic color, and the trapezoid would be a complex color. If you have any experience with art, you know that the answer is blue right away, because Red, Yellow and Blue are the primary colors. Otherwise you might just have to guess until you came up with a color that couldn't be made by combining other simple colors. Either way, the answer is blue. So the trapezoid must be blue+red=purple.
1) Triangle - Red
2) Circle - Yellow
3) Square - Blue
4) Trapezoid - Purple
It all fits logically, it's simple, and everything is taken into account, so that must be the answer.
It's the same thing as a math series, where you are given a sequence of numbers and asked to deduce the next in the series. There are all sorts of complex or ridiculous theories you could come up with to provide a potential answer, but the answer that is wanted, or is the most desirable, is the one that solves the problem simply and clearly. Anyone can argue as much as they want about there being an infinite amount of solutions or whatever else, but there is almost always just one answer that is both simple and clear.
