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My favorite puzzler: 100 prisoners are each locked in a room with three pirates, one of whom will walk the plank in the morning. Each prisoner has 10 bottles o
by gmiller123456 3y ago
My favorite puzzler:
100 prisoners are each locked in a room with three pirates, one of whom will walk the plank in the morning. Each prisoner has 10 bottles of wine, one of which has been poisoned. And each pirate has twelve coins, one of which is counterfeit and weighs either more or less than a genuine coin. In the room is a single switch which the prisoner may either leave as it is or flip. Before being led into the rooms, the prisoners are forced to wear either a red had or a blue hat. They can see all the other prisoner’s hats, but not their own. Meanwhile a six digit prime number of monkeys multiply until their digits reverse. Then all have to get across a river using a canoe that can hold at most two monkeys at a time. But half the monkeys always lie and the other half always tell the truth. Given that the nth prisoner knows that one of the monkeys doesn’t know that a priate doesn’t know product of two numbers between 1 and 100 without knowing that n+1th prisoner has flipped the switch in his room or not after having determined which bottle of wine was poisoned and what color his hat is. What is the solution to this puzzle?
This was played on the July 18, 2009 edition of Car Talk on NPR and attributed only to “Alan”. If you download the podcast, the puzzler starts at the 36:00 minute mark.
- dylan604 3y agoI have been known to repeat one of theirs to younger people, "when is 90 greater than 100?" with the answer being "on a microwave". Maybe this one wasn't a puzzler, but something definitely heard on Car Talk. Beyond the puzzlers, their other jokes were top class dad jokes.
- karmajunkie 3y agohuh… It never would have occurred to me to enter numbers on a microwave this way! But it works, at least on mine. My first reaction to the question was "When they're both negative…)
- dylan604 3y agoAre you saying you would never enter 100 for 1 minute? But I'm pretty sure this is the meaning of it. Sort of like there are 10 types of people in the world...those that do, and those that don't
- sp332 3y agoThey would never have typed 90 seconds instead of 1:30.
- dylan604 3y agoThat's an assumption on your part, while it might just happen to be true. Typing 130 vs 90 is 3 button presses vs 2, so the converse would be why type 100 when you could type 60. You can either be a seconds person or a minutes person. Edit: they entire number entry thing for microwaves is just weird. 60 => 1minute. 100 => 1 minute. 120 => 1minute 20 seconds. Essentially, any 2 digit number is always interpreted as seconds. Which makes me wonder if the Car Talk question wasn't actually "when is 99 > 100"
- sp332 3y agoIt's not an assumption, it's what karmajunkie said two post up.
- dylan604 3y ago"It never would have occurred to me to enter numbers on a microwave this way" in what way? entering 90 for 1 minute 30, or for entering 100 for 1 minute vs 60? It's not clear, and you're not helping
- karmajunkie 3y agolol this is not the comment of mine i would have expected to generate controversy… for the record, i meant entering 90 instead of 130. my entire life i’ve converted to min/sec.
- bluepod4 3y ago> Typing 130 vs 90 is 3 button presses vs 2 For me, it’s not about the difference in number of button presses. I switch between “seconds” and “minutes” depending on the situation. (Sometimes the instructions for frozen food are in seconds. Sometimes they’re in minutes and seconds. But this is just one reason why I might switch between two. There are others.) Also, number of button presses varies depending on the microwave (e.g. express cooking). One could even argue that pressing the same +30 second button 3 times is simpler than moving your finger to press 2 buttons for 90 seconds. (Personally, I tend to press a single “1” for express cooking 1 minute and then click the +30 second button to get 90 seconds. But again, not always).
- philshem 3y agoLink to episode: https://www.npr.org/2009/07/18/106774140/car-talk-0929-july-18-2009 https://www.npr.org/2009/07/18/106774140/car-talk-0929-july-...