Fruit basket puzzle

There are 3 baskets one of which contains oranges, other contains apples, and last one contains mangoes.

Person is allowed to pick from any one of the baskets and then he needs to figure out which basket contains which fruit.

Can anyone suggest solution for this puzzle?

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If only one pick is allowed and there are no other conditions, this is not possible: there are $3!=6$ possible arrangements, and one pick can just discriminate three cases. – Johannes Kloos Jul 24 '12 at 15:08
There is some information missing. – picakhu Jul 24 '12 at 15:11
Pick from one of the baskets. WLOG it's mangos. Then lean over and sniff the other baskets until you smell oranges. Done. – Hovercouch Jul 24 '12 at 15:15
I've already seen a variant of this with the information that all boxes are labeled incorrectly. Then, for example, if you pick one fruit from the box labeled "apples" and it is an orange, so it must be the case that the box labeled "mangoes" contains apples, and the box labeled "oranges" contains mangoes (otherwise mangoes would be the box labeled "mangoes", but we know that all boxes are labeled incorrectly). – anonymous Jul 24 '12 at 15:21

1 Answer

I think that the problem is in fact the following. Excuse me if it is not. A person has three baskets, one with mangoes, one with apples and one which has apples and mangoes The boxes are all labeled. The vendor knows they are all labeled incorrectly. How many fruits must he take out to know which basket is which?

Answer:1. All he has to do is take a fruit from the basket that says mixed. If he gets a mango he knows that the box is mangoes (it cant be mixed because they are all wrong.) so therefore the box that says apples has mixed and the one that says mangoes has apples.

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