Thursday, December 25, 2008

Riddle

Below is something that Me and my friend used to pass the time when we were in Aus.

__________________________________________________________________

Three Dots

(John Banks)

You are travelling in a deep, dark forest when, suddenly, on a dark and stormy night, you are captured by the kind-but-not-so-bright forest people. They keep looking at you and saying to each other, "It be a smart person!"

You are marched to their village and seated in the square. Before you are blindfolded, you notice two other lucky souls seated in chairs facing you. Then you are told that the forest people king is about to die. He previously sent messengers throughout the land seeking the 3 smartest people. You are one, and two others have also been found. He now gives you all a task to see which one is the wisest.

He tells you, "I have seated you in an equilateral triangle so that each of you faces the other two. While you are blindfolded I will paint a dot on each of your foreheads. Each dot will be red or green so that there can be any combination of red and green dots, for example, 1 red and 2 greens, or all red, etc. When I remove the blindfolds each of you must raise your hand if you see _any_ green dots, i.e. 1 or 2 dots. As soon as you have figured out what color your own dot is, tell me how you knew."

So he paints a green dot on all three foreheads. When the blindfolds are removed, all three hands go up. After a long pause, the wisest person, (that's you!) say, "Your highness, I have a green dot. The reason I know this is that..."

How did you know?

Extra credit: assume there are 4 people and all have green dots... can our hero figure it out now?

____________________________________________________________________

If you guys think this is too easy and already have the answer let me know I will pass you the link to the entire riddle series.