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Questions tagged [coins]

Puzzles involving the manipulation of coins as physical objects inside a set of rules.

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11 votes
4 answers
2k views

Simulating a biased coin with an unbiased one

You are given an unbiased fair coin, ie., a coin that produces heads with probability 0.5. Can you use this coin to simulate a biased coin that produces heads with some given probability $p$ ? This is ...
Dmitry Kamenetsky's user avatar
29 votes
7 answers
4k views

Simulating an unbiased coin with a biased one

You are given a biased coin. With probability $p$ it produces heads, where $p$ is in the range $(0,1)$. How can you use this coin to simulate an unbiased fair coin, ie., a coin that produces heads ...
Dmitry Kamenetsky's user avatar
15 votes
3 answers
4k views

68 coins with 100 weighings

You have 68 coins of different weights. Using only a balance scale and the coins themselves, find the heaviest and lightest of the coins with only 100 comparisons. This puzzle is adapted from The ...
Satish Patel's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
1k views

Bag of gold coins weighing with a digital scale

We are given 100 bags, each with 200 coins. All but one of the bags are filled with identical gold coins, but the other bag contains fake coins. The fakes all weigh the same as each other, but weigh ...
Tom92's user avatar
  • 81
17 votes
15 answers
6k views

How to get a uniform 1 out of 7 chance, using only a coin and a 6-sided die [closed]

There are seven days in a week. Let's say you want to pick one at random, such that each day has an equal chance of being picked as each other day. In other words, the goal is to obtain a uniform ...
DrZ214's user avatar
  • 297
13 votes
3 answers
3k views

Coin removal problem

I have a slight variation of the coin flipping problem. There is a line of $n$ coins on the table; some of them are heads up and the rest are tails up, in no particular order. The object of the ...
user avatar
10 votes
3 answers
697 views

12 coins problem but you can't understand the scale

You have 12 coins 11 are real, one is fake but you don't know if it is lighter or heavier. You have a scale that gives you output but you don't understand it (let's say it is written in a foreign ...
user13084415's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
440 views

Finding both fake coins in a set of $5$

There are $5$ rupees on Arnav's table. He knows that exactly $2$ of the rupees are counterfeit. One of these $2$ coins is lighter than a normal (non-counterfeit) rupee, and one of these $2$ coins is ...
user591814's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
2k views

The swap puzzle

The swap puzzle Place small coins heads up on the squares marked H and tails up on the squares marked T. Swap the positions of the Heads for the Tails in as few moves as possible. There are two ways ...
Puzzler's user avatar