Bar of Gold

[Tiberius]

The rules also say nothing of just handing him the entire bar on day one to pre-pay the labor for the week. You have effectively paid him the same amount everyday, in advance.

Would you have called 'foul' on that answer? Would I be justified in calling you out for a 'tantrum'?

Err...yes, because of this rule:

You must give them a piece of gold at the end of every day.

You are being deliberately awkward in my view. If you can't see how paying him in advance with one bar is completely at odds with a very specific rule, then I'm astounded. The problem would be non-existant if you could just hand him the full bar! This is lateral thinking; you have to come up with a straight-forward answer that fulfils the restrictions of the question. Technically, you could argue a solution where you sell the gold, wait until the gold drops in value, and re-buy 7 bars of gold, giving him one on each day (and no breaks either!). Unfortunately, the solution is neither simple, nor clever. It's more of a convenient way of getting around the gist of the question.

In your analogy there was no rule for only carrying one item in the boat each trip.

Can you read?

but the boat can only take him and one of the aforementioned items

I stand by my contention of a disingenous puzzle.

I stand by my contention that you are throwing a tantrum because you couldn't think laterally and solve it, and instead you have come up with two objections, both of which are covered by rules I had already set down.

The puzzle wasn't created by me, I simply copied it from another website. It's been around for years. You find it disingenuous, but nobody else does; they find it lateral.