His point is that he got the value of "?", but not the "correct" method to arrive at that solution. Neither of blog posts seem to ask explicitly for the method.

His point is that he got the value of "?", but not the "correct" method to arrive at that solution. Neither of blog posts seem to ask explicitly for the method. I think choosing to take a statistical gamble on a silly meaningless puzzle (rather than attempt to solve it conventionally like everyone else) is actually not necessarily a bad idea. I talked about that a while back here : http://lhorie.blogspot.com/2009/03/games-bias-and-statistics.html http://lhorie.blogspot.com/2009/03/games-bias-and-statistics... (albeit I was reacting to a more statistical-natured puzzle at that time) I do agree this puzzle isn't very interesting in that it doesn't evoke as much gut feeling as, say, the Monty Hall paradox.