#6 The Sage's Hat
The three wisest sages in the land were brought before the king to see which of them were worthy to become the king's advisor. After passing many tests of cunning and invention, they were pitted against each other in a final battle of the wits.
Led blind-folded into a small room, the sages were seated around a small wooden table as the king described the test for them.
"Upon each of your heads I have placed a hat. Now you are either wearing a blue hat or a white hat. All I will tell you is this- at least one of you is wearing a blue hat. There may be only one blue hat and two white hats, there may be two blue hats and one white hat, or there may be three blue hats. But you may be certain that there are not three white hats."
"I will shortly remove your blind folds, and the test will begin. The first to correctly announce the colour of his hat shall be my advisor. Be warned however, he who guesses wrongly shall be beheaded. If not one of you answers within the hour, you will be sent home and I will seek elsewhere for wisdom."
With that, the king uncovered the sages' eyes and sat in the corner and waited. One sage looked around and saw that his competitors each were wearing blue hats. From the look in their eyes he could see their thoughts were the same as his, "What is the colour of my hat?"
For what seemed like hours no one spoke. Finally he stood up and said, "The colour of the hat I am wearing is . . ." what did he say and WHY? (intentional emphasis on why)
hopefully this one will be more difficult unless you have heard it before, which if you have I ask you to please refrain from posting the answer, just tell me sometime so others can have a chance
posted by Big Jigger @ 10:42 PM
3 Comments:
Short Answer:
three blue hats
Long Answer:
our sage knows that there are only two possibilities:
2 blue + 1 white
or
3 blue
if our sage were wearing a white hat, the other two sages would be staring at 1B and 1W hat. after only a few minutes silence, one of these sages would have realized that he was wearing a blue hat because if he were wearing a white hat the other sage would realize he was wearing a blue hat.
our sage realized that the only situation that would make all three of them sit there an ponder for that long would have to be three blue hats.
[basically, if our sage has on a white hat, it would be possible for the other sages to figure out what they were wearing. when they didn't guess after a long time, our sage knew he had a blue hat]
**side note** i am pretty sure this is the right answer, but not sure enough to risk my head over it.
correct my friend, also I apologize for the purple font, it came from teh website though I think it served as a good change of pace
"The colour of the hat I'm wearing is..." Blue, because white is not a color.
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