# Tag Info

Accepted

### Guessing hat colors. 4 prisoners

This is a bit of a stretch and I'm not sure it'd even work, but...
• 1,478
Accepted

### 6 prisoners, 2 colors, one mute

It will be Both A and B can see, what C sees, and that's why they both know that From there, the problem reverts to the earlier one:
• 69.2k

### Guessing hat colors. 4 prisoners

A simple way would be that Either there is, or there isn’t, but since everybody guessed the same, everyone will be right, or everybody will be wrong. No-one can be wrong by more than one, so whenever ...
• 69.2k

### Infinitely many hats

Here is another strategy, which requires looking at just 1 other person's hat:
• 13.5k
Accepted

### Cooperative guessing game: no incorrect guesses

The players can achieve $15/16$ win probability, which is optimal. Associate the 15 players with nonzero vectors in $\mathbb{Z}_2^4$ like $(0,1,1,1)$. Let $S$ be the sum (entry-wise XOR, or Nim sum) ...
• 23.7k
Accepted

### Numbered hats, Warden and Maths

Sure, it's perfectly doable.
• 139k
Accepted

### 3 Numbers on Hats, A = B + C

Answer: First, some observations Alright. Now, let's take a look at different possibilities: Generalizing this, we get the rule above: Do note however that the actual answer is actually slightly ...
• 4,607
Accepted

### Alternating Hat Colors

Before the "game", the prisoners decide on this strategy: Assign an integer 1, 2, ..., n to each prisoner arbitrarily and call this the "prisoner number". When the numbers are shown, each prisoner ...
• 6,524
Accepted

### 10 prisoners and 10 lists of numbers

The strategy is: Why it works: For example:
• 33.7k

### 6 prisoners, 2 colors, one mute

I'll try another explanation(with same result): Here are the steps: Next step: So: Who talks?
• 420
Accepted

• 124k

### Five hats and four logicians in a circle

First observations Since the puzzle is symmetric in white and black hats, I assume that the first man has a black hat. Then only three cases remain: (1) BWWB; (2) BWBW; (3) BBWW. ($\ast$) If a man ...
• 44.8k
Accepted

### Hat Guessing Game in Vegas

The players can win with probability This is optimal because: A strategy that achieves this is:
• 23.7k
Accepted

### 100 Dwarves and a tiny room

No such algorithm exists. Suppose Bob sees 0's on 99 shirts. He must call out 0, since it is possible that 0 is the only represented number. Suppose Bob sees 0's on 98 shirts, on everyone except ...
• 31.4k
Accepted

### 100 Dwarves vs. the Evil Elf

I will describe a lower bound and an upper bound on the probability of success the dwarves can guarantee. These bounds are: Lower bound: Imagine that there is a stack of 100 shirts in the corner of ...
• 13.9k

### Numbered hats, Warden and Maths

Everybody walks out free and happy.
• 5,088
Accepted

Solution: Edit:
• 391

### Sorting kids by hat colours

I think this is a classic (and probably a duplicate): To separate the two groups cleanly
• 2,672

### Infinite wizards and hats

Create infinite groups of finite size with $$size = (2^k)-1 ; k=2,3,...,infinity$$ Each of the groups will handle themselves as per the optimal strategy in this answer by xnor Thus each group has a ...

### The sadistic executioner (a.k.a the 100 prisoners)

This is a fantastic puzzle, one of the best I have had to solve, so give yourself time to think it over. It took me a month to come to the solution. To make you guys understand the solution, I will ...
• 295
Accepted

### Five hats and four logicians in a circle

Call the logicians A, B, C, and D, in the order they speak. WLOG, say A is wearing a white hat. Note that each logician sees 2 black, 1 white if he's wearing white or 2 white, 1 black if he's wearing ...
• 114k
Accepted

### Surviving Captain Nefarious

This is a proof that it is impossible to beat $\frac{7}{9}$. There are 27 equally likely situations for the choice of colors. Each person will guess correctly in 9 situations. However, for any two ...
• 33.3k
Accepted

### A hat puzzle involving wizards

One possibility is It is not possible for the wizards to do better. There are $16$ possible combinations of hat colors. Of these, $7$ of them have at least one wizard with no black hat, so cannot be ...
• 13.9k

### Numbered hats, Warden and Maths

You're all making this much more complicated than it needs to be. :) Let's take an example:
• 5,621
Accepted

### Hat Puzzle with 5 different colours and 3 people

I think they can get all the way to probability of getting all three guesses right. There's probably a possible explanation that utilises Galois fields, modular exponents and discrete logarithms, (...
• 69.2k
Accepted

### MORE Prisoner Hats!

If the PhDs were allowed to plan a strategy together ahead of time, then the following would work: Unfortunately, the king forbids them from collectively planning. Each couple may come up with a ...
• 31.4k
Accepted

### Guess simultaneously, color of your hat, no passing allowed

Here is a way to guarantee 500 correct guesses. Edit: The above is optimal, because the expected value of random guessing is 500, and with no extra information given to the logicians about how the ...
• 44.9k

### Infinitely many hats

So I just wanted to solve an amazing extension of this puzzle that I happen to know of. Suppose that there were more than two colors. In fact, let's suppose that there were an uncountably infinite ...
• 9,722
Accepted

### N logicians wearing hats of N colors

There are two secrets to this question. First is to realise that you want no player in the circle to guess that the circle looks the same. If they guess the same circle, it is a wasted guess. For ...
• 9,002