Puzzle Competition
Three puzzle competitors are blindfolded. A white piece of paper is glued to each competitor's forehead and they are told that not all of the pieces of paper are black. The blindfolds are removed and the competitors are told that the prize will go to the first to deduce whether the paper on his forehead is black or white.
The three competitors are silent for a short time, then all three announce white at the same time. Why?
Answers in the comments please. Note that there are two possible answers to this one - one relatively easy and intuitive, one harder and more 'logical'.
posted by steven | 1:31 AM
6 Comments:
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Hmm? Not sure what happened there, I didn't remove your comment Danielo! - plep
This is a sticky one. I started typing a solution, then found a hole in my logic.
The 3 paused briefly. That would indicate that none saw the one thing that would assure a correct answer. After that I'm stuck. Can't wait for someone to solve this.
Tom
Sean, your girlfriend is right! And I agree, this -is- a sticky one.
This puzzle comes from Boris A. Kordemsky's 'The Moscow Puzzles', a book of logical and mathematical puzzles published in the USSR in 1956.
Kordemsky's second (more intuitive) solution is agreeably socialist: For it to be a truly fair competition, all three contestants should be set the same puzzle to solve. Therefore a contestant could reason that if he sees two white pieces of paper, so should his fellows.
Next puzzle will be this coming weekend.
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