(FORTUNE Magazine) – And now for a bit of brain exercise. Several weeks ago, we were flipping the pages of The Sciences, a high-class magazine published by the New York Academy of Sciences, and came across the following tranquillity-destroying puzzle: Four boys -- Alan, Brian, Charles, and Donald -- love four girls -- Eve, Fay, Gwen, and Helen. The four girls love the four boys, but no one's love is requited. Alan loves the girl who loves the boy who loves Eve. Brian loves the girl who loves the boy who loves Fay. Charles loves the girl who loves Donald. Gwen does not love Brian. Helen loves ((a)) boy who does not love Gwen. Who loves Alan? The situation described, made to order for a sexual-harassment suit, proved tough to analyze. After quite a bit of aimless thrashing around, we took the problem in desperation to world-famous sociologist Daniel Bell of Harvard, who instantly supplied a correct answer (''His mother'') that unfortunately was not accepted by the New York Academy. We ultimately did solve the problem, but it took some help from the old PC. Our solution relied on a Basic program initially designed to print out all possible combinations of lovers but then successively rewritten to eliminate all ''illegal'' combinations. Total time spent designing and rewriting the program: Easily less than 28 hours. This brings us to a puzzle designed by the present writer, who got the idea ! for it upon receiving the latest batch of congressional ideology rankings. The rankings, published annually or biennially by ten or 12 different organizations, tell us how liberal and conservative the fellows have been lately, on a scale of 0 to 100. Ever interested in the still unexplained phenomenon of liberals, we instinctively turned to the brochures of three liberal pressure groups -- Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the AFL- CIO's Committee on Political Education (COPE), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) -- to see whom they think of as their big friends nowadays. Specifically, we asked this question: Which member of the U.S. Senate had the highest overall liberalism ranking (derived by adding the scores of the three groups)? The answer lurks in the following clues. (1) The winner's total score was 277. (2) ADA gave its only 100 rankings to two New England Senators, neither of whom is known as Teddy. (3) The ACLU gave high-minded liberal Alan Cranston of California an 87, just one point below its top rating. (4) All ADA ratings are given in multiples of five. (5) Patrician liberal Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, who said in 1984 that the death of Soviet boss Andropov was a great blow to the United States, received an ACLU score of 85. (6) Glamorous liberal Teddy Kennedy got a higher ACLU score than Cranston but was five points behind Paul Sarbanes of Maryland in the COPE department. (7) The two highest COPE ratings, 100 and 98, went to Senators from the same state. (8) Loquacious liberal Pat Leahy of Vermont, who left the Senate Intelligence Committee after admittedly excessive blabbing of national secrets, had a COPE rating only one point lower than that of Hawaii's Spark Matsunaga but several points below that of Spark's colleague, Daniel Inouye. (9) The two Maryland Senators, feisty liberal Barbara Mikulski and ritualistic liberal Paul Sarbanes, had ACLU scores of 77 and 70, respectively. (10) The scores received by Kennedy sidekick John Kerry of leftist Massachusetts, all of which happened to be divisible by five, included a COPE rating four points higher than Cranston's but an ADA score five points lower. (11) The highest score given a Hawaiian Senator by any of the three ranking organizations was only five points above the lowest score. (12) Paul Simon of Illinois had a lower ADA score than Matsunaga. (13) The most liberal Senator is among those mentioned in the preceding clues. Coming in the next issue: answers to both puzzles, together with a brief and yet acidulous commentary on the votes that propelled a certain solon to the top.