Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Red or White?

I think I’ve written a couple of posts with the title ‘Today is not my day’ or something along that line. Today however, is slightly different. It’s not to say I had a great day, but it was better, I guess.

One of the teachers gave us an IQ question to think over the week but he said “If you can solve it in less than 3 minutes, you can come down here and teach, and I’ll sit up there.” *points to us* (3 minutes because he himself had solved it in 3 minutes)

And this is the question:





There are 3 people of different heights with the shortest one standing in front and the tallest one right at the back. All three of them stood facing the same direction; the direction faced by the shortest guy. And then there were 3 white hats and 2 red hats. You put a hat on each of them without letting them know which color hat are on their head. Then you ask the tallest guy, “Do you know the color of your hat?” And he answers, “No.” They have to be a 100% sure of the answer, by the way. So you proceed to the second tallest guy and you ask the same question and he answers “No” too. Then you go to the last guy, the shortest one, and he says “Yes, I know the color of my hat and am a 100% sure of it.”

What is the color of his hat and how did he know?

For some crazy reason, I knew the answer immediately. Ok, maybe not immediately. But I can be sure I took less than 3 minutes :P Now, I’m not exactly ‘fast’ when it comes to IQ questions. For the religious, they might say God delivered the answer to me, but I’d rather think of some other crazy reason like the answer in the teacher’s head bounced off the ceiling into mine. I answered it and I was right. I hope he was joking about the teaching part.

So what’s your answer?



UPDATE: Carney solved it. So if you really wanna do this, don't look in the comments :)

10 comments:

Petras Ražanskas said...

White

The reasoning goes like this:

If tallest guy would have seen two red hats, he'd know immediately, that he has a white hat on. It wasn't so, hence at least on of the dudes in front had a white hat on.

After this, if the medium guy would see a red hat in front of him, he'd immediately know that he has a white hat on, because either him or the short guy must be with one, as the tall guy couldn't tell his hat. This didn't happen, hence the medium guy saw a white hat, and the small guy was bright enough to figure it out.

joyfulchicken said...

The answer is pink, because short guys in pink hats are funny.

Katherine said...

Your teacher's cool~~ :P

What subject is he teaching?

philos said...

I don't want to boast, but I got it in under 1 min., I guess God delivered it to me... but what does he teach? When can I go and take over?

joyfulchicken said...

Arthur, first you said "I don't want to boast," then you boasted anyway. Do you realize how silly that sounds? :-P

But yeah, the teacher is kinda dumb. 3 minutes? That's... pretty bad.

runawaycat said...

宝茹 - He teaches a few subjects and I'd rather not say it. No offense, but it's just because I don't want trouble.

arthur - Hehe :P I don't think you can teach what he teaches. Just the other day he was saying that what we learn is not learned by students in other courses.

JC - Haha! That was funny! Shooting game!
I don't think you'd wanna call him dumb. He's a prof and has achieved quite a number of great things.

philos said...

I didn't, I gave the glory to God hehe

Cometh said...

The blue colored guy.....

Wait...

They are all black huh...


*** my eyes.....arghhhh

my EYES.....

=p

Anonymous said...

Wah -- and he insults every student's intelligence by giving them the question think about over the WEEK.

runawaycat said...

Haha! You're right, unless students here are generally stupid.