A King wants to hire a new advisor, and has tested every man within his kingdom to see who is the smartest. However, there are 3 men who are all equally intelligent and the King can not separate them. Therefore, the king devises one final test…
Each man is presented before the king, They kneel and are blindfolded. A white hat is placed on each of the 3 men’s heads, and then the blindfolds are then removed. The King then asks the men to stand up if they can see at least once white hat. The 3 men look at each other and obvioulsy all stand up. The King then says “Sit down if you know the color of your hat”. After a little while, one of the men sits down and says: “My hat is white”.
“Well done”, replied the King “You’ve got the job.”
How did the man know? There were no mirrors, no reflections, he wasn’t secretly signalled by someone and it wasn’t a stab in the dark.
He knows because neither of the other two have an answer. If he were wearing, say, a chartreuse hat, the other two candidates would see it; this would lead White-hat A to conclude that White-hat B had risen because he saw a white hat on WH-A’s head. WH-B would arrive at an equivalent solution. Both would sit down. The guy who sat waited long enough to observe their behavior, then sat down.
Whether I’m right or not, I’m not going to let it end all riddles here:
This riddle’s answer on this Board you will find:
How looks a king in the land of the blind?
We have 3 Guys lets call them A,B and C. The Winner is A. He knows he is wearing a white have because one of his opponets (lets say B) isn’t. Therefore for C to stand up he must be looking at the white hat that is on A’s head.
Actually, the King wasn’t smart enough to figure out the riddle on his own; he just found it in a copy of 1001 Ways To Select Your New Advisor by R. Wayne Schmittenberger.
As it turned out, though, the advisor selected had also read the book and memorized all of the answers, in the hopes that some pathetic King would actually resort to such logic puzzles in order to select an advisor.
The Kingdom shortly went to hell in a handbasket, as the King proposed ludicrous policy after ludicrous policy, with the advisor merely smiling and nodding. Everyone begged the King to rid himself of the foolish advisor, but the King insisted upon always administering one last test to measure his true merit. Therefore, the advisor kept his job even after the Grain Debacle of 1547. (The King, having noted that grass grows greener in an area that recently suffered a small fire, immediately ordered the peasants to burn all of their wheat fields in order to produce a massive harvest. The resulting conflagration destroyed fourteen cities, thirty-two towns, one-hundred and fifty-eight villages, and one hamlet. (Not the town type- a traveling acting troupe trying to divert villagers’ minds from the impending inferno.) Worse yet, the King ordered the action taken in July, which meant that no fields survived for the fall harvest, which meant that those peasants which had survived the fires thence starved.)
Eventually, the King was overthrown by his nobles; his advisor was thrown into jail and told, “We will come for you before the week is out; but you will never know which day we come for you.” When his captors came to execute him (on a Wednesday, just for the record), the advisor had bashed his brains out on the cell wall, with the message “You were supposed to be here on Monday!” written in his own blood on the floor.
Ok, folks, if you are gonna post riddles, if you DO know the answer, I think it goes to MPSIMS, if you don’t, then let us know, 1st, before we go guessing, and you have no idea which guess is right.
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 color 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 color of my hat?”
For what seemed like hours no one spoke. Finally he stood up and correctly named the hat on his head. What colour was it, and how did he know ?
The guy stood up and declared he was wearing a blue hat.
Here’s how he figured it:
A = ?
B = blue
C = blue
If he were wearing a white hat, then B would see 1 white hat and one blue hat. B would know that C would see 1 white hat and whatever was on his head. If B were wearing a white hat, C would see 2 white hats, thus deducing the only blue hat was upon his own head, and immediately stand up. C did not immediately stand up. Thus B would then know that he was wearing a blue hat.
But B did not stand up and declare he was wearing a blue hat. Thus he saw two blue hats.
