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Riddles, verbal games, etc.

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16:36 / 29.08.03

Cholister: if it's the answer I'm thinking of, there was an episode of "wild science" where the boffins had to try the same trick. Unfortunately, gas bubbles form within ice unless it is prepared under strict conditions (same reason Blaine had his ice specially shipped in) leaving it translucent.

That is, "no... never seen it work except in that film."

Saveloy: This is how the situations were stated to me. As I recall, the point of this "conundrum" game was to figure out the backstory leading up to the situation described. The other point of it was to fill long hours with something less tedious than whatever else we were doing.

Much longer-winded than riddling: What has four legs and flies?

16:50 / 29.08.03

What has four legs and flies

A picnic table? :P

20:43 / 29.08.03

1. Different lights do make me strange, thus into different sizes I will change. What am I?

2. How far can a dog run into the woods?

3. Gaze at this sentence for just about sixty seconds and then explain what makes it quite different from the average sentence.

Quick! What is it?

20:51 / 29.08.03

1. A shadow
2. 1/2 way
3. ????

20:55 / 29.08.03

I know 2. - Half way and then he's running out...lots of these are from a book when I was a kid

20:57 / 29.08.03

Dammit Kegboy...!!

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

00:14 / 30.08.03

What has four legs and flies

2 pairs of trousers.

01:48 / 30.08.03

3. Gaze at this sentence for just about sixty seconds and then explain what makes it quite different from the average sentence.

It has been gazed at for a whole minute.

Cholister: Mithras was a Parthian god, and the Parthians were Tartars, not Romans, so nannernanner.

Um... this is more of a joke than a "riddle", but it's my favorite: what do a horse and a bird have in common?

01:50 / 30.08.03

Kegboy and Bear...you both are right!

07:49 / 30.08.03

Mm - like I said, the salient points are from David Gemmell. However, according to Encyclopedia Mythica, Mitra was a Vedic god. It says 'This god fared far better in Persia under the name of Mithra, from whence his cult spread all the way to Rome where he was called Mithras.' Wikipedia says 'Mithraism was one of the most popular religions in the Roman Empire, especially among soldiers and civil servants.'

So...

11:13 / 30.08.03

Okay, moving this over here, and away from the psychopath test.

Here's a conundrum.

So you're at a party. It goes on for an indefinite period of time. The only respite comes in the evening when the partygoers retire to recharge for another day's revellry. Here's the thing, if you're invited to the party, you'll be issued with a black or a white hat. A white hat means you can stay, a black hat, that you go and never return, asap. Now, the catch: you NEVER get to see your own hat. Not when it's put on your head, not in a reflection, not EVER.
So then, how do you know whether the organizers want you gone? No one is going to tell you you've got a black hat on your head, they're far too polite. No, it's up to you to discover what coloured hat you are wearing and make the appropriate decision.

Okay, so you're at the party, you're wearing a black hat, and so are three other people. How many days does it take you and all your unwanted buds to work it out and bugger off?

Stuff I left out the first time around:

1) There are 100 people in attendence.
2) You can't talk to anyone about the hats. Sorry Kauna.

11:54 / 30.08.03

Now I've got a fantastic riddle, a riddle that only 2 people on the board thought they had all the answers to...

Now, should I open up the riddle to all and sundry? Oh look, a riddle within a riddle.

We'll see...

17:21 / 31.08.03

This one pissed me off royally at a charity thing we did in my last job. I was in a room full of people who gave one answer and I was convinced every one of them was wrong.

Man looks at photo in frame and says:
Brothers and sisters have I none
But this man's father is my father's son

So please tell me who's in the photo. Still bugging me.

17:41 / 31.08.03

Isn't it his son? His (son's) father is his father's son, ie. him.

19:12 / 31.08.03

Its his picture.

19:35 / 31.08.03

I agree with smoothly weaving.

If I have no brothers or sisters then my son's father is the same as my father's son. Thats me. So he's looking at a picture of his son.

19:42 / 31.08.03

OK, I've done this one before, but it is a favourite. And I'm hoping that someone won't have heard of the infamous Monty Hall Problem.

Game show setting. There are 3 doors, behind one of which is a prize. Monty Hall, the host, asks you to pick a door, any door. You pick door A (say). Monty opens door B (say) and shows voila there is nothing behind door B. Gives you the choice of either sticking with your original choice of door A, or switching to door C.

Should you switch?

You can google for lots of answers, but where's the fun in that?

20:37 / 31.08.03

I remember when this was new and the subject of real controversy. Now does anyone think you shouldn't switch?

It is an interesting one though. For instance, the right answer becomes very intuitive when you make it 100 doors, and Monty opens 98 of them leaving only the door originally selected and one other. But when it's just the three, it seems to fuck with people's minds more. I suppose, like lots of brainteasers, it's all about misdirection. Monty isn't just opening a door that the prize definitely isn't behind, he's leaving closed the one it probably is.

20:50 / 31.08.03

But that's not necessarily true, is it? If it is standard practice on Monty Hall's show to open one of the doors, then if you actually picked the door with the prize behind it, then all he's doing is opening another prizeless door at random.

But I'm shit at these things.

20:57 / 31.08.03

Let the battle commence.

Don't worry, Chol, *everyone* is awful at this problem. It took me ages to be convinced. The bloody AMS (american maths soc) devoted an article to it. Thats why I don't think it is just misdirection, smoothly. I think there is some genuine psychology going on here.

21:12 / 31.08.03

So what I gather from what I just read is that there's a greater probability of it being behind the door you didn't pick, for reasons that I don't fully comprehend, either because I was reading something that didn't explain it very well, or because I am (and I *am*) crap at maths. But that's it... it's not necessarily *not* behind the door you did pick. Which isn't very satisfying, really.

And then there's the stuff about if this was a live action problem rather than a word problem.

And I have a headache now.

21:21 / 31.08.03

Well, this is interesting then.
Cholister - But what are the chances of you picking the right door first time? Does the probability of the prize lying behind the door you chose change when Monty opens another door?

Lurid - at risk of rotting the thread, what do you think is going on? Thing is, I found myself very easily convinced, but quickly discovered that this put me in a minority. I have a suspicion that this was because I've always been hopeless at maths, and I so just grasped it at an intuitive level. But maybe there's more to it.

21:25 / 31.08.03

Sorry, Cholister, missed your next post.
Yeah, switching doesn't guarantee that you win - just increases your chances. That's because you're first door probably isn't where the prize is (1 in 3 chance only), so the other door probably is (2 in 3). So by switching ou're going to win 2 out of 3 times, and lose 1 in 3. If you don't switch, that ratio is reversed.

21:25 / 31.08.03

In a maths type way, I'm prepared to take it on faith, because I'm shit at maths.

Lurid - any chance of some quality linkage here?

21:30 / 31.08.03

Smoothly, you must have a quite strange mind. And perhaps an aptitude for probability. I had to work really hard to get it myself.

21:38 / 31.08.03

More likely just another representation of my latent psychopathology which is apparently only revealed by brainteasers, Lurid.

21:41 / 31.08.03

And what I find interesting is that by adapting the question so that there are 100, or even 10 doors, no one seems to have any trouble at all.

21:44 / 31.08.03

It's because the more doors there are, the clearer the probability that you fucked up the first time is. Or something. And then the rest. The whole probability thing is clearer, in a hazy kind of crap at maths way.

21:52 / 31.08.03

Look at this link. A simple explanation and even a Java simulation of the game.

The trick is to realise that you have a 1 in 3 chance of picking the grand prize the first time. When you are shown a door without a prize, you still have a 1 in 3 chance of being right so the remaining door has a 2 in 3 chance of containing the grand prize. The only way you can lose by changing is if you chose the prize in the first place. How likely is that?

It's because the more doors there are, the clearer the probability that you fucked up the first time is.

Totally.

21:59 / 31.08.03

Here's another old favourite:

You've got 3 boxes. One contains apples, one contains oranges, and the other contains apples and oranges. They're labelled as such, but the three labels are on the wrong boxes. By picking out one piece of fruit from just one of the boxes, you can relabel all three correctly. How?

22:11 / 31.08.03

If we assume that all the labels are wrong - thats a lot of information - then the only way to be sure to find out something is to choose a fruit from the box labelled "apples and oranges". If you get an apple, you have the "apple" box. The two boxes left are "oranges" and "apple and oranges", but are labelled "apples" and "oranges". So the box labelled "oranges" must be "apples and oranges". The one labelled "apples" must be "oranges".

If you find an orange, its the same, mutatis mutandis (he says showing off one of the only bits of latin he knows).

22:31 / 31.08.03

Okay, okay, that was too easy. Sometimes I forget which message board I'm on.
This one is, I believe, quite famous but I hope offers a bit more of a challenge.

There's a competiton between 3 people. Each has had either a blue or a red sticker fixed to hir forehead. They are put in a room together and told to raise one hand if ze see at least one blue sticker. They are also told that the first person to work out what colour hir sticker is wins a prize. All three instantly raise their hands and shortly after one stands up and claims the prize.
What colour was hir sticker and how did ze know?

22:43 / 31.08.03

Well...the only way you can really know what sticker you have in the situation described is if you see one blue and one red. In which case you must have a blue sticker. Thing is, the other guy with the blue sticker sees the same thing and could also have worked it out. So it doesn't sound right.

But...it must be the right solution since if everyone puts their hands up there must be at least two blue stickers. And three blue stickers leaves you uncertain as to what sticker you yourself have.

22:53 / 31.08.03

This one is hard (at least, I think so).

What word goes with

Board, Gaze and Fish

to make another word?

22:59 / 31.08.03

Fuck, I remember really struggling with that and, I'm pretty sure, giving up.

I like that one because the answer's in what doesn't happen as much as what does.
The key clue is in "...shortly after, one claims the prize". Ze knows that if all three raise their hands all would know that there were at least 2 blues. If one of them could see a red, ze would have instantly claimed the prize knowing that ze had to have a blue. Since no one does, our winner decides to take it. Clarse.

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