Hi, all. I’ve been posting puzzles from James Randi’s website ( http://www.randi.org ) here in hopes of getting some insight. So here we go again…
This time, the puzzle involves a “coin-flip bet” that the flipper apparently can’t lose. I won’t transcibe the whole puzzle, here’s a link - http://www.randi.org/jr/10-22-2000.html (scroll all the way down to find new puzzle)
Of course it goes without saying that a weighted (or two-headed) coin would be the easiest & most obvious answer. I’m going to trust that the answer is not that crude or simple, and that it involves some thought.
My observation is: why does Stan even have someone “call” the toss? He really ought to simply toss it & if it’s tails he pays for all, heads each pays for himself. This makes me think that the fact that Stan has someone “call” the toss has something to do with the way he twists the outcome to suit his needs. Beyond that, I’m not sure how he could always win, without being strung up by the “riff-raff”.
For the first two cases, Stan can just say “It’s heads, we all split”
For the third, he can weasel out by saying “whoops, you called it wrong, I guess we all split”
For the fourth, I’m not sure. Maybe he says “well, you won, now you have to pay for everyone”. Then, when the “winner” protests, he says “OK, let’s just all pay our own share”. Maybe that’s what Randi means by “The only advantage he gains is that he’s admired by all the guys as a sport, for whatever that’s worth.”
Note that, at the bottom, it says Stan never repeats this trick with the same crowd. This leads me to believe that it’s a “heads - I win, tails - you lose” kind of scenario.
The thing that confuses me is that, in the puzzle, Stan first says that he’ll pay the whole bill if it comes up tails, and then tells a person to call it in the air.
But, assuming that’s just a bit of poor editing, if the person chooses correctly, Stan says, after the fact, that the person was choosing what result would make the entire group pay for the meal. If they choose incorrectly, Stan just says they were picking the result for which they wouldn’t have to pay.
Perhaps for the fourth he could claim that the caller was actually “calling” which outcome would make everyone pay for their own, and it came up so all pay.
And a modified “third case” could be he could say that the caller was calling out which would cause Stan to pay, and got it wrong.
But I can’t picture a crowd buying these explanations…
I wonder if there’s some sort of psychological trick to this one as well. The first time he pulls this on someone, it seems like their natural reaction would be to call Tails, since most people would jump at the free-dinner option. And since Stan is picking the caller, he could be picking someone who he thinks will buy into that mentality.
But even with that I’m still not seeing how he could deal with the Tails-Tails possibility. The idea that the caller was calling which possibility would make Stan pay the whole thing would work if Stan hadn’t specified up front which face would get which result.
Yup, I’m with you (except that Stan would after-the-fact tell the Caller that they had called what would make EVERYONE - not Stan - pay, in a Tails/Tails situation.)
That’s the whole problem. If he hadn’t specified, it would be fairly easy to set up no-lose situations; but he DID say, “tails, I pay for everyone”. So how DOES he concincingly deal with TAILS/TAILS? Aye, there’s the rub!
I already posted my answer to his email, so I’ll answer here.
You are all pretty much correct. It is not bad editing that he first claims heads they all pay and tails he pays, then has the guy call it in the air. This is something that is unnecessary for a true event, but necessary for the trick. I have been in the situation where you declare a case heads vs tails, and then for some reason call it in the air because that’s expected. The psychological pressure is there and works wonders. He says “Call it” as he throws it in the air, 9 out of 10 someone will call one or the other because it’s a coin toss, that’s the expected thing to do.
As for the justifications, the best I could come up with for if the guy calls tails and it turns up tails, Stan should have to pay the whole bill, but he can word his response something like “You picked for everyone to pay, so I would have had to pay if it were heads.” But a couple of these cases rely on the buddies being dumb/drunk enough not to realize he just twisted the rules mid game.
I was going to say that in high school I had a buddy like that. He would make some debate or bet and then weasel around the answer by redefining the terms or twisting the rules mid game. He was annoying as hell.
“Our hero Stan, now happily married to Nora… Stan is known to be very tight with his money, now that he’s hitched… He points to one of the group. ‘You call it while it’s in the air!’”
And guess who he points to? His wife! And she calls “heads,” of course.
call heads, land heads, everybody pays, he looks like a good sport.
call tails land heads. Says ‘I’m not sure why I told you to call it since I had already stated the rules, It was just a habit telling someone to call it’. everybody pays good sport.
call heads, lands tails. ’ you called it wrong, everybody pays’ fishy result, everybody pays, bad sport.
call tails, lands tails. 'I gave you the option to call it so you could switch the outcomes I proposed, just so you don’t think I have a weighted coin or anything. When you called tails, you switched the everybody pays to tails.'really fishy result,everybody pays, bad sport, Stan gets his ass kicked.
Does anybody have a copy of Penn & Teller’s How to Play With Your Food? I remember it had instructions for a trick that was at least very similar to this if not identical. I don’t remember how it worked though.
The puzzle that’s (currently, at least) on the site is not the same one that folks here are discussing. On the site, it does not once mention tails. What it says is essentially that if the caller is wrong, the caller wins, and if the caller is right, the caller loses (assuming we consider “Stan pays” to be caller winning, and “split the bill” to be caller losing). The key is in the definition of the “right” and “wrong” call: Depending on the situation, Stan can say that the “right” call is the one that wins everyone else a free meal, or that it’s the one that matches the coin.
“If you call it correctly, we each pay our share.” is the opposite of what we’d expect. Normally, we’d expect that if you call it correctly, you ‘win’, so you pay less. Except his bet is actually the opposite of this.
So what happens? If the mark makes the correct call, then Stan says, “You called it correctly, so we each pay our share.” If the mark makes the wrong call, then Stan says, “Sorry, you missed out. Maybe next time.” and the gorup makes the assumption that because it was called incorrectly, the bet was lost. Bobort- IIRC, the trick from Penn and Teller’s How To Play With Your Food is to have a double-sided coin and say “Heads: such and such, Tails: such and such” knowing full well which side will always come up. The one who told P&T of this trick after using it to eat free lunches for years? Mr. James Randi.
I might as well throw it out there. If the guy calls it correctly, everyone pitches in, which is what Stan wants. Stan’s instruction are, “Call it in the air.” If the guy does in fact say “Heads” or “Tails” while the coin is in the air he has called it correctly. (As in he called it in the correct manner) The actual outcome of the coin toss would be irrelevant. If he tried it twice with the same group, the designated caller would remain silent, or call it after it hit the ground, and Stan would be screwed.
I hope this isn’t the answer, because if it were to happen in real life, my guess would be that Stan would not be thought of as a good sport but more like a guy who had been recently pummeled.
Darn it, I KNEW there was something fishy about the wording!!! At least I didn’t lose sleep (not over this puzzle…)
Anyway, now that we know the right wording…
I think you’re probably right, John. Except that if someone remembered exactly the way he worded the setup (and actors are good at memorization, and are adept at listening to each other…) he would be in big trouble. In fact, actors and magicians are exactly the WRONG type of people to try this trick around because they look for those types of tricks… I think it’s just a weak puzzle.
