Guys in Hats
Today I was talking about Noah’s Monk post to my friend Matt who actually makes a living off of this crap. He shared a few other fun riddles with me. Well 2 riddles that even after he explained them I still don’t understand and the riddle below. Don’t worry this is the last of these….until we get bored and put up another I imagine.
There are three people. Each is randomly given a hat that is either red or black. Each can see the other’s hats but not his own. All at the same time, they make a guess about their own hat color red, black, or no guess. They win, as a team, if at least one person gets it right and nobody gets it wrong. They can settle on a strategy in advance. What should their strategy be?
The first person to answer properly gets 50% off their next regularly priced Big Tool.
Wouldn’t they just share information and tell each other the color hat that the other guys are wearing?
they don’t get the hats until the agree on their strategy. after they get the hats they are no longer able to communicate with each other.
Not sure if this is breaking the rules, but…
The guys agree to stand in a circle once they have their hats. They then look to the guy at their right. If the guy on their right is wearing a red (or black, whatever), he sits down.
Based on who is left sitting/standing, each guy knows what color hat he’s wearing.
ok to be clear their strategy can’t involve communicating to each other in any way before they choose.
Can’t we just put red dots on all their heads and get them to kill themselves?
they get drunk and forget the rules, then take the hats off because they itch, then forget what they were supposed to be guessing about.
OR
their strategy is for only one person to guess, because the probability of one person getting a 50/50 guess right is higher then the probability of 2 people doing that.
Look at the hats the other two are wearing. If they’re both the same colour you guess the opposite, if they are different colours then you shut up.
That way you’ve got a 75% chance of being right, which beats the 50% you’d have with a blind guess.
“No guess” is code for - the other two are wearing the same color hat.
“no guess” answers first and identifies the other two as having the same color hat. Then the other two can just look at each other and know their hat color.
close but remember that they must give their answer “all at the same time”
This riddle is infuriating me. It’s literally impossible. The only way it could work is if the permutations are limited - three red and two black for example.
PS am I allowed to post on this blog?
Dylan keep in mind that we aren’t looking for an answer that delivers success 100% of the time. We just want the answer that gives the best probability of success.