Difficult Puzzle

1) There is a truth teller (always tells the truth), a liar (always lies), and one that sometimes answers truthfully and sometimes lies. Each man knows who is who. You may ask three yes or no questions to determine who is who. Each time you ask a question, it must only be directed to one of the men (of your choice). You may ask the same question more than once, but of course it will count towards your total. What are your questions and to whom will you ask them?

Ans: There are 6 possible states for the order of the men: TRL, TLR, LTR, LRT, RTL, RLT

There are 8 possible combinations of anwers for questions: TTT, TTL, TLT, TLL, LTT, LTL, LLT, LLL.

Theoretically it's possbile if you could figure out a way to get any of the 8 combinations of answers assigned to the states, but with the unreliability of Random's answers, I thought it was impossible. There is always a possiblity in any solution where Random will exactly mirror T or L for answers. He could always lie or always tell the truth and you can never tell when he is lying or telling the truth. This being given, I thought you can NEVER separate 6 distinct answers to apply to the 6 states, and therefore can never be sure who is who.

After a minute though, I saw through my own error in logic. I was always dealing with questions where T and L would give the same answer regardless of the order of the men. I saw that if you can get T and L to give a Yes/NO answer, then you can figure out where R's worthless answers are. The only way I saw to do this is to ask about the order of the men themselves.

So:
Ask #1 if L is standing on R's right arm (our left if they are facing us).
The answer gives you a split in the order they are standing:
If YES, then it has to be T telling the truth, L telling a lie, or one of R's worthless answers, so: TLR, LTR, or RTL, RLT.
If NO, then it has to be T telling the truth, L telling a lie, or R and his worthless answers, so: TRL, LRT, or RTL, RLT.

Now we know, based on the answer to #1 where to avoid R's worthless answers. We now ask T or L "Is T in the lineup?" If answer 1 was Yes, we ask person 2, if it was no we ask person 3.

The answer now will give us some more info. If it's Yes, it's T answering the truth, if it's no, it's L answering a lie. So based on who we asked, we now know:

Yes, Yes: Has to be LTR, or RTL
Yes, No: TLR, RLT
No, Yes: LRT, RLT
No, No: TRL, RTL

Now any question separating the two possiblities works - just make sure you are avoiding R's worthless answers.

For example:
Yes, Yes - ask #2 if #1 is L. (We know #2 is T and will tell the truth) - Yes = LTR, No = RTL
Yes, No, - ask #2 if #1 is T. ( We know #2 is L and will tell a lie) - Yes = RLT, No = TLR
No, Yes - ask # 3 if #1 is L. (We know #3 is T and will tell the truth) - Yes = LRT, No = RLT
No, No, - ask #3 if #1 is T. (We know #3 is L and will tell a lie) - Yes = RTL, No = TRL

So we have the order and know who is who.