The mainmast is broken, the cabin boy is on deck, there are 12 passengers aboard, the wind is blowing East-North-East, the clock points to a quarter past three in the afternoon.
[3] More recently, a simpler version has been used to study how students react to word problems: A captain owns 26 sheep and 10 goats.
[4] Many children in elementary school, from different parts of the world, attempt to "solve" this nonsensical problem by giving the answer 36, obtained by adding the numbers 26 and 10.
[4][5] It has been suggested that this indicates schooling and education fail to instill critical thinking in children, and do not teach them that a question may be unsolvable.
[4][5] However, others have countered that in education students are taught that all questions have a solution and that giving any answer is better than leaving it blank, hence the attempt to "solve" it.
[7] Some versions begin with a statement like "Imagine you're a ship's captain", before distracting the answerer with much irrelevant information.