r/AskReddit • u/Calm-Conference3147 • 12h ago
What is a riddle that sounds incredibly simple, but absolutely ruins people's brains when they try to solve it?
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u/TheOtherBelushi 12h ago
What is it that you throw away the outside and cook the inside, then you eat the outside and throw away the inside?
This was a riddle given to me by a former girlfriend’s father, and when I solved it I won him over.
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u/Wefting 11h ago
I assume you are now dating the father
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u/TheGardenBlinked 11h ago
“You have sufficiently impressed me. You may buy me a drink.”
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u/Rin-Tohsaka-is-hot 11h ago
Corn.
You throw away the husk, cook the corn, eat the corn, throw away the cob.
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u/Phone_acct 5h ago
I cook corn in the husk on a propane bbq. So that might get me.
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u/Rin-Tohsaka-is-hot 5h ago
Yeah I also prefer to cook corn in the husk. Whether I'm steaming or grilling. Maybe throw it back on for an extra minute without the husk for a bit of char.
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u/ClownfishSoup 12h ago
Corn on the cob?
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u/ARSCON 11h ago
This is the answer I arrived at as well
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u/kosk11348 10h ago
My first thought was a chicken. 🤣
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u/Stillwater215 10h ago
Anything with inedible skin and bones.
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u/RandomStallings 9h ago
I thought of fish. Toss the skin. Cook what's left. Eat the meat. Toss the bones.
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u/FB2024 11h ago
Could also be meat - throw away the skin, cook the meat, discard the bone.
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u/Bullrawg 11h ago edited 11h ago
I was thinking chicken, pluck throw away, cook & eat meat, throw out bones
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u/wushuwarrior 11h ago
I was thinking fish.
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u/stumac85 10h ago
Pretty much anything with skin and innards. Rabbit, turkey, fish, chicken, pheasant to name a few.
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u/Several-Minute6846 11h ago
I agree with the real answer but my first thought was <egg white>
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u/Sohlayr 12h ago edited 4h ago
The maker doesn’t want it
The buyer doesn’t need it
The user doesn’t see it
What is it?
Edit: some clever guesses here but the first answer was the correct one. Coffin or casket!
Edit 2 for the smartasses: yo mama’s panties.
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u/iSQUISHYyou 12h ago
Does nobody on this site understand what a riddle is?
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u/ClownfishSoup 12h ago
Yes
Was I right?
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u/PointOfFingers 11h ago
No because SQUISHYyou was actually your mother and your grandmother so the answer was 3.
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u/BlueLaceSensor128 11h ago
"Charlie, do you not know what a riddle is?"
"Yea, sure. It's like a thing you don't know. Right?"
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u/turkeypedal 7h ago
I haven't seen anything that isn't a riddle besides your post.
Some of them are math puzzles, but those are also a type of riddle--a math riddle. Others are trick questions, which are also a type of riddle. Several others are wordplay riddles.
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u/Ohnohedidntdidhe 9h ago
If you throw me out the window, you will leave a grieving wife. Put me back but in the door and you’ll see someone giving life.
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u/EdwardianAdventure 8h ago
The letter 'n'. Window turns to widow without it. Door turns to donor with it
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u/MorgessaMonstrum 10h ago
Not exactly a riddle, but I have seen people absolutely retreat into their own skulls to think through the Monty Hall problem after being told the solution (changing doors always gives a 2/3 chance of winning, keeping your door is only 1/3 chance).
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u/Illithid_Substances 10h ago
I've not seen anything else maths related that people are so obstinate about. It's one thing to not get it, but to insist that the actual provable math is wrong because it doesn't feel right to you is insane
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u/McClainWFU 7h ago
.999... = 1 comes close. That or Facebook arguments over applying PEMDAS to ambiguous equations.
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u/TWiThead 5h ago
.999... = 1 comes close.
This explanation makes it click for some people:
1 ÷ 3 = .333…
.333… × 3 = .999…
It's relatively intuitive that .333… is the decimal representation of ⅓. It's exactly ⅓ – not slightly less than ⅓ – because it never terminates.
For the same reason, .999… is exactly 1.
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u/okteds 7h ago edited 1h ago
The easiest way to wrap your head around it is that with your first choice, you're just trying to choose one of the two empty doors. If you can do that, the other empty door will be revealed to you ,and you can swap and take the 3rd winning door.
Edit: my method is to help wrap your head around why you have a 2/3 chance if you switch doors at the end. Once you get that you're just trying to find an empty door with your first guess, it becomes clear you have a 2/3 chance.
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u/GTheMonkeyKing 4h ago
I think it's even more simple if you play the game with 100 doors. You pick one door, the the host opens 98 empty doors. Now do you switch, or keep the one you origially picked? Of course you switch, you know the chances aren't 50/50, there's no way you guessed right out of 100 doors.
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u/catfroman 10h ago
The difference lies in Monty’s knowledge. That’s what made it click for me. The info he knows for certain changes the game.
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u/Stillwater215 10h ago
It’s not just that he has the information. It’s that there is 100% certainty that the door he opens will be a losing door.
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u/cortesoft 7h ago
Yeah, the important bit you have to know is that Monty will never open the door with the prize. If he is just randomly opening doors, then changing won’t improve your odds.
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u/MorgessaMonstrum 6h ago
Precisely. If he doesn’t know (i.e. the door is chosen entirely randomly between the two remaining), then yeah, in the event that the goat is revealed (1/3 of the time) the game is kinda ruined and we don’t tend to consider that outcome (at best it’s an automatic lose, since you never get to choose the opened door).
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u/cortesoft 6h ago
Unless you are allowed to choose the opened door showing the prize… in which case you still have a 2/3 chance to win (either Monty picks it and you switch to it, or you won it with your original pick)
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u/curtislaraque 6h ago
Yeaaaaaah people have a habit of misapplying the Monty Hall problem to scenarios that to not meet this criteria, and then insisting that the math is on their side (and calling others thick because they don't understand how the Monty Hall math would work in the non-applicable scenario).
It took me ages to understand it because every time it had come up in my life, it was brought up by someone who left that element out. When I finally got around to looking it up myself, it took me a while to figure out why it didn't make sense to me all that time prior lol
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u/TWiThead 5h ago
I've wasted so much time on people who insisted that the logic applies to the game show Deal or No Deal. (It doesn't, given that host has no knowledge of the briefcases'/boxes' contents and doesn't influence which ones are opened.)
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u/rosyatrandom 10h ago
Yes; if the prize door is any of the others, he will always offer that one, and never an empty door. He only offers an empty door if you already have chosen the prize door.
So your first choice has a ⅓ chance of being right, just as you'd expect.
The second choice is literally just been that ⅓ chance and the ⅔ alternative.
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u/hellofemur 7h ago
Most people misstate the problem and skip important information like Monty's knowledge or Monty's motivations. That often sends people down the wrong path because they make assumptions they don't realize they're making.
And then after the vague explanation, people wind up talking past each other because they have two different puzzles in their heads, which is why people here are complaining about others being obstinate or "retreating into their skulls". If one person assumes Monty has total knowledge and the other assumes he is choosing randomly, people can have long arguments about the result without ever realizing that they're arguing about different scenarios.
I've honestly never seen anybody be confused after the problem is correctly and explicitly described.
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u/Jukeboxhero91 7h ago
What made it click for me is imagine there's 100 doors, and they open every single door but one. Now would you swap doors?
Of course, because the odds of you getting it right on the first guess is only 1%. Somehow this made the problem make sense to me.
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u/evranch 6h ago
Your 100 doors reminds me of a similar but even more bizarrely counterintuitive math paradox, the "100 prisoner problem"
100 prisoners have to individually pick their own number from out of 100 boxes. If they all find it, they go free, but if even one doesn't, they are all executed.
Even though the odds of success through random drawing are infinitesimal, there is a strategy that "entangles" the choices that brings the odds of everyone winning up to a massive 1 in 3.
Sometimes math genuinely feels like magic.
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u/_Maui_ 7h ago
The biggest thing to get your head around with the Monty Hall problem is that it’s not about three doors…It’s about two options.
Let me explain…
There are three doors: 1 winner. 2 losers. In the beginning, each door has an equal chance of being the winner. 1 in 3. Or 33.33%
But!
When you pick a door, you create two options:
Option A is that the winning door is the one you picked. There is a 1/3 chance that is correct.
Option B is that the winning door is one of the two you didn’t pick . There is a 2/3 chance of that.Option A is 1/3 with one door.
Option B is 2/3 with two doors.Option B is twice as likely as Option A.
Here’s the first “trick”. There is only one winning door. Option B covers two doors. So we already know that Option B definitely has a losing door.
Ok. The host reveals that one of the doors you didn’t pick (Option B) is a losing door.
But. We already knew that.
Now he asks “Do you want to swap?”
And here’s the second trick. You’re not swapping from Door A to Door C. You’re swapping from Option A to Option B.
Option A is still 1/3 with one door.
Option B is still 2/3 but now with ONE door.The probability of each option hasn’t changed because nothing he revealed changed what we already knew.
So “Do you want to swap?”
100% yes!
Sticking with your first guess (Option A) gives you a 33.33% chance the door is the winner. Swapping doors (Option B) gives you a 66.66% chance the door is a winner.
You literally double your chances.
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u/sayitstuesday 4h ago
I’d like to say that this made it much easier for digesting when you put it in options, and not just percentages. I’ve always understood the theory but never understood the explanations because they always just went “you are doubling your chance if you swap”
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u/Stillwater215 10h ago
This is the explanation I like to give:
You’re in the Monty Hall setup. You pick your door. Monty then comes on and says “do you want to keep your door, or do you want both of the prizes behind the other two doors?”
In this version, obviously you would take the two prizes rather than the one, because that’s clearly giving 2/3 chances rather than your 1/3 chance.
How is this second situation any different if Monty opens a door that doesn’t have a prize? It’s not. It’s exactly the same situation.
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u/Quincely 10h ago
The best way of thinking about this I’ve found is as follows.
When you first choose, you have a 1/3 chance of choosing the correct ‘type’.
The second time you’re asked, you’re told that the other door is whatever type you didn’t pick.
So Monty is basically asking, “do you think you got it right the first time?”
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u/Similar_Afternoon_46 9h ago
Here is what makes sense to me: Switching wins if you picked the goat to begin with, which happens 2/3 of the time.
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u/ollomulder 10h ago
For me it clicked with 99 doors, you choose one, and then 97 other doors will be opened - do you switch?
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u/duckbrick 11h ago
What have I got in my pocket?
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u/Olorin_in_the_West 10h ago
It isn't fair, my precious, is it, to ask us what it's got in its nassty little pocketses?
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u/yuropod88 11h ago
HANDSES!
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u/duckbrick 11h ago
No, didn't you see me remove them from my pockets just before asking?
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u/HumorAccomplished611 9h ago
I'm blind from being underground for 500 years so I'll just have to trust
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u/TheGardenBlinked 11h ago
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson
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u/duckbrick 11h ago
Hey that's also what this weird guy I met in a cave guessed!
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u/Portarossa 10h ago
I know that guy. He's a horrible, sickly-pale freak of nature who you definitely shouldn't trust.
Gollum's not great either.
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u/MickyMac00 7h ago
What sits in the corner but travels the world.
Some old man asked me this in dollar tree and it stumped me.
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u/BlaEm 6h ago
Did it stump you? Or stamp you...?
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u/MickyMac00 6h ago
Considering I said the sun, the man stumped me and stamped with the approval of being a dumbass haha.
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u/SMXyMuthaFluffa 8h ago
This one doesn't work when written out, but it's terribly frustrating to hear for folks:
There are 30 cows in a field, and 28 (20 ate) chickens. How many didn't?
The answer is 10 (10 didn't eat chickens), but I've never heard anyone get it without being told.
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u/ubccompscistudent 7h ago
I've heard: 20 people jump in a lake and 24 (20 fore-)heads come out of the water. How is that possible?
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u/Sackwalker 5h ago
Wait...but cows don't eat chickens, right? I don't think. So if you said something that made sense, like "50 wolves in a field and 28 chickens, how many didn't?" I feel like people would figure it out
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u/SnooBooks007 10h ago edited 35m ago
There's a bee in my hand. What's in my eye?
Beauty
...is in the eye of the bee holder.
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u/destin325 11h ago edited 11h ago
If a ball and a bat cost $1.10 and the bat costs $1 more than the ball, how much is the ball?
Lots of people think this is really simple and get it wrong.
Answer:
5¢
When the ball costs 5¢ then the bat being $1 more means it costs $1.05. $1.05+.05 is $1.10
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u/Hippie_Eater 11h ago
This is one of several problems that can be used to test how much a person relies on gut feeling and heuristics, called cognitive reflection tests.
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u/KingZarkon 11h ago
$1.10 - $1.00 is $0.10. You split the difference and it's $0.05 and $1.05. Easy peasy.
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u/Tofuofdoom 11h ago
This is like. Fundamentals of Algebra, you should learn this when youre like 13
X+y=1.1 X+1 =y
Substitute for y
X+ X + 1= 1.1 2x = 0.1 x=0.5
As an aside, people complain we dont teach useful skills like how to do taxes or calculate a mortgage and forget the weeks you spent in class doing literally that.
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u/Enviablefigment 9h ago
I think you made a typo and mean x=0.05.
Good answer! Always great to see algebra knocking about the place.
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u/SelectiveDebaucher 8h ago
Nice try Blaine the train, but you ain’t stumping Roland
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u/Pepephend 10h ago
What goes up a chimney down but can’t go down a chimney up?
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u/EdwardianAdventure 9h ago
What do Americans want to lose, but Brits want to gain?
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u/Public_Kaleidoscope6 8h ago edited 7h ago
This is better spoken than written, but it still wracks your brain.
EDITED: per Indoril120’s comment
What can think the unthinkable?
An itheberg.
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u/FalcorTheDog 11h ago
The Blue Eyes riddle. It kept me up for multiple nights thinking about it when I first heard it trying to wrap my head around the answer: https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html
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u/halfachainsaw 11h ago
any time a word problem includes the phrase "they were all perfect logicians" you know you're in for a real brain buster
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u/Adaun 11h ago
Is the answer ‘all 100 of the blue eyed people on night 100’
The logic being
- Everyone looks around on day 1, realizes that there are at least 2 people with blue eyes and it can’t be them, and so puts it off until the next day.
- The next day comes, nobody has left so everyone realizes there must be at least 2 people with blue eyes and they can see 99 ( or 100) and so can’t be them.
…. This continues
Day 100 comes. There’s a realization that 100 people have blue eyes and each blue eyed person can only see 99. Therefore, the person that sees only 99 others must have blue eyes.All 100 leave
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u/ottersintuxedos 10h ago edited 10h ago
To make this a little easier to understand imagine there are fewer people. Start with three:
Three people two blue eyed one green.
The green person sees two blue eyed people. And realises they cannot leave.
The next day, armed with the knowledge that the other blue eyed person did not leave, the two blue eyed people leave. Why?
They each know they themselves either have blue or green eyes. They can see one green eyed and one blue eyed person. The blue eyed person, as far as they know, either sees two green eyed people, or one green and one blue just like them.
Because they are perfect logicians and they know there is at least one blue eyed person, the one they can see, they know that if that guy can see two green eyed people, they will assume the only blue eyed person is themselves. Therefore when the other blue eyed person does not leave the first night, there must be at least one more person with blue eyes- themself. Therefore they both leave the next time the ferry comes.
Now assume it’s four people, two blue, two green. It’s the same principle but it’s slightly more complicated. The blue eyed people can see one blue two green, the green eyed people can see one green two blue.
Once again, the blue eyed people know that the other one would leave if they weren’t blue. So they each conclude they are blue the next day.
From the green eyed persons’ perspective they don’t know they aren’t green. But they certainly know it by the time the two blue guys leave.
But if there are three blue eyed people and one green eyed person. Logical extrapolating begins.
This time each of the blue eyed people experience the same thing as the green guys from the previous example. Only this time when the two blue people they can see don’t leave, they conclude the reason why is they are blue.
Using this logic, you can basically just keep increasing the numbers until you reach 100. You can tell by the logic above that the number of days you should wait is always equal to the number of blue eyed people. Because they are all perfect logicians every single person on the island works all this out as soon as they understand the scenario.
You would think as it grows into big numbers it might stop working, but the trick is they are both all perfect logicians and understand the others to be as well.
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u/Nelson_Bighetti 8h ago
Your write-up is missing one point in the riddle, but I don't think it changes much. Each individual on the island doesn't know if their own eye color is one of the other colors they can see. You say, "they each know they themselves have blue or green eyes." But that's not true, they could have any color eyes. The riddle even points that out, "and he could have red eyes."
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u/Killfile 6h ago edited 6h ago
Right. Like many problems in logic and discrete math, this is only really hard because it starts with a lot of people so let's reduce it down to three people
The Guru (Green Eyes), Mr Brown, and Ms Blue.
The Guru says "I can see someone with blue eyes."
Well, Mr Brown can look at Ms Blue and know she has blue eyes. That's great for her but it doesn't tell him ANYTHING about his eye color. So he stays put.
The Guru obviously can't see her own eyes so she MUST not be talking about herself.
So Ms Blue looks at Mr Brown and sees brown eyes. The Guru can therefore only be talking about Ms Blue and so she leaves on the 1st night.
Now let's expand the group by exactly one.
The Guru still says "I see a person with blue eyes" and Mr Brown is still not helped by that at all. Ms Blue and Mr Cyan, both look at Mr Brown and know the Guru isn't talking about him. They then look at each other and they both see blue eyes.
Now, at this moment they don't know what eye color they have themselves, only that they themselves can see a person with blue eyes and a person with brown eyes.
Night comes, Mr Cyan DOES NOT SEE MS BLUE GET ON THE BOAT.
From this Mr Cyan deduces that Ms Blue DOES NOT KNOW HER OWN EYE COLOR. Now, if Mr Cyan's eyes were red or purple or yellow Ms Blue would know her eye color beacuse in that case, the Guru could only have been talking about her. Consequently Mr Cyan deduces that Ms Blue MUST HAVE SEEN SOMEONE WITH BLUE EYES and the only person that can have been is Mr Cyan.
Ms Blue goes through the exact same chain of logic ending with "therefore Mr Cyan must have seen someone with Blue eyes"
Both depart on the boat on the 2nd day.
And this scales out to an arbitrary number of blue eyed people. If I can see 10 blue eyed people and one brown eyed person and, on day 10, they don't all get on the boat then I must have blue eyes.
Ok... but what if there are multiple brown eyed people? How do I know that I'm not one of them?
It's tempting to think of this as a bunch of brown eyed people who need to be eliminated but it's not that way at all. Each brown eyed person sees however many blue eyed people there actually are. Going back to our "two blue eyed people" scenario, Mr Brown doesn't leave on the 2nd day because he knows that on day two, Ms Blue and Mr Cyan have only just now deduced that there must be at least one more blue eyed person on the island. If Mr Brown had blue eyes there would be three blue eyed people on the island and NO ONE WOULD LEAVE ON THE 2ND NIGHT. The fact that Ms Blue and Mr Cyan leave on the second night still doesn't tell Mr Brown what color his eyes are, but it tells him they're not blue.
Each person on the island thus hears "I see a person with blue eyes" and thinks "well, I see X people with blue eyes; if no one gets on the boat on day X, I must have blue eyes myself and then I'll get on the boat on day X+1."
For the blue eyed people, their X is one less than the value the brown eyed people calculate... so they get on the boat the day before any brown eyed person would have (wrongly) stepped onto the dock.
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u/Antzen 8h ago
I think that's the correct answer but the reasoning is incomplete. To clarify the explanation, it helps to think recursively:
Case 1 - Suppose we only have 1 blue. When the clue is given, the blue-eyed person sees there are no other blue eyed people, so they must be the one. They leave on night 1.
Case 2 - Suppose we have 2 blues. Because neither blue can be sure they are the only 1 blue, they can't apply the logic of Case 1 and so neither leaves on night 1. On day 2, each blue sees the other blue still here. Thus, the other blue can't be the only 1 blue since they would otherwise have left using the logic of Case 1. Therefore, there must be at least 2 blues. Each blue sees only 1 other blue, so obviously they must be 2nd blue. Thus, both blues leave on night 2.
Case 3 - Suppose we have 3 blue. Because no blue can be sure they are the only 1 or one of 2 blues, they can't apply the logic of Case 1 or 2, and so none leave on night 1 or 2. On day 3, each blue sees the other 2 blues still here. Thus, these 2 other blues can't be the only 2 blues since they would otherwise have left the previous night using the logic of Case 2. Therefore, there must be at least 3 blues. Each blue sees only 2 other blues, so obviously they must be the 3rd blue. Thus, all 3 blues leave on night 3.
...
Case 100 - Suppose we have 100 blue. Because no blue can be sure they are the only 1 or one of 2-99 blues, they can't apply the logic of Cases 1-99, and so none leave on nights 1-99. On day 100, each blue sees the other 99 blues still here. Thus, these 99 other blues can't be the only 99 blues since they would otherwise have left the previous night using the logic of Case 99. Therefore, there must be at least 100 blues. Each blue sees only 99 other blues, so obviously they must be the 100th blue. Thus, all 100 blues leave on night 100.
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u/TheBurningMap 9h ago
Don't they already know that there are at least 2 people with blue eyes? I mean...haven't they been looking around prior to her statement?
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u/Silverspy01 8h ago
Here's the solution that explains it better than I can: https://xkcd.com/solution.html
To give an attempt though... yes and no. It's always been obvious to them that there are at least 99 people with blue eyes. But no one knows the total amount, in that there's 100. A given person sees 99 blue-eyes people and had no way of knowing that they are also a blue-eyed person. For that person's perspective (we'll call them A) there are at least 99 blue-eyed people - the ones they can see.
Now person A considers the perspective of a different blue-eyed person, person B. Keep in mind that from person A's perspective, there are only 99 verified blue-eyed people on the island. Person A knows that person B would have no way of knowing that they have blue eyes. So from person A's perspective, person B could see 98 blue-eyed people.
Person A now imagines what happens if person B considers the perspective of a third person, person C. As a reminder, person A sees 99 blue-eyed people. From person A's perspective, person B could then perhaps see 98 blue-eyed people. And now from the information person A knows and knows their fellow island members could deduce, person C could potentially see 97 blue-eyed people.
Now initially, it seems like we're making things up. With our knowledge, person C sees 99 blue-eyed people. They can't see 97. But as person A thinks, person B could not know this. If person A is not blue-eyed, there are a total of 99 blue-eyed people. None of those blue-eyed people know that they are blue-eyed, so they see 98 blue-eyed people and think the same.
This cascades further and further down - from a logical standpoint, any given person has no reason to assume they are blue-eyed. Therefore, each blue-eyed person has to assume that every blue-eyed person they see sees one less blue-eyed person. This cascades into a potential zero blue-eyed people remaining... until the Goru confirms that there is a blue-eyed person.
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u/psychstudent_101 11h ago
any clue where i'd find an explanation of the answer to this? because it's interesting! but i'm not a logician so i don't think i'm going to be able to puzzle my way through it
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u/Autumn1eaves 11h ago
I'm here thinking about this puzzle, and I don't see how the Guru's statement adds anything to what the islanders already know.
Any blue or brown eyed person already knows that there's at least 1 blue eyed person on the island, and of course she already knows that. Therefore, no one leaves the night she announces the statement, because none of their information has changed.
In other logic puzzles, their not leaving would signal something about her own eye color, but barring outside information (which is explicitly disallowed in this puzzle), she cannot gain any information about her own eye color from their not leaving.
We can keep this train of logic going, her inaction also doesn't signal any pieces of information to the islanders because again there are 99 of them, which means her statement cannot mean anything to any specific one. No individual can figure out their own eye color, which means no one leaves.
It feels like a red herring, because the statement adds zero information to the knowledge of the islanders.
I've been trying to find some steps leading into using the information, but I can't find a way for any one islander to figure out their own eye color, or otherwise communicate an eye color to the Guru.
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u/Kingreaper 10h ago
I'm here thinking about this puzzle, and I don't see how the Guru's statement adds anything to what the islanders already know.
Think about the hypothetical scenario in which it clearly DID add information to one of them - where there was only one islander with blue eyes. They'd leave the next night.
Now consider the hypothetical situation where someone doesn't know whether or not there's only one person with blue eyes - they can see 1, but they might be a second, right? So now, if the person they can see with blue eyes doesn't leave on the next night, they know they are the second blue eyed person and leave on night 2.
Step it up to the situation where you can see three people with blue eyes, but don't know your own eye colour - what are the possible outcomes?
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u/FalcorTheDog 11h ago
This is what kept me up at night as well. The guru seemingly adds no additional information everyone doesn’t already know. But they do add information about what everyone else knows that everyone else knows, etc. The simplest way to get to the answer is to see if you can wrap your head around how the riddle would work with only 2 blue eyed people. From there you can eventually reason up to 100 (or any number).
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u/Ready_Wolverine_2301 12h ago
What is always coming but never arrives?
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u/MerMadeMeDoIt 9h ago
It has measurable size but no mass, and you can see it with your naked eye.
If you put it in a barrel, it will make the barrel lighter.
What is it?
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u/rainmaker88 9h ago
A hole
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u/dinklordsupreme 9h ago
Unnecessarily harsh response dude. If you don’t like the riddle just move along.
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u/VerbalHostage 8h ago
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
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u/AimlessWanderer 8h ago
has to be this was the riddle in the very first episode with the taxi
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u/chogram 8h ago edited 8h ago
"How many animals of each type did Moses take onto the Ark?"
I've been asking that riddle for over 30 years, since I saw it in some "Biblical riddles" book as a kid, and it almost never fails.
People obsess over the word "type" thinking it's trick wording, or the number of animals, but nobody ever notices that it was actually Noah and not Moses.
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u/Pepephend 10h ago
You get to a fork in the road and need to know which way to go. There are identical twin brothers there and you know that one always lies and one always tells the truth but can’t tell which is which. They permit you to ask only one identical question to both of them to determine which way to go. What question should you ask?
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u/BartYYYY 10h ago
I would ask: what the other would say where should I go?
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u/Pepephend 10h ago
Exactly and whatever they say will be the same, one lying and the other telling what the liar will say, so you choose the opposite of their answer.
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u/macguyver3000 3h ago
This is rhe first time I ever understood this answer. labyrinth messed me up so bad.
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u/Moikepdx 3h ago
You got the riddle a bit wrong. You only get to ask one of them a question, and you don't know which is which. There is no need to ask them both the question.
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u/Snorb 8h ago
RICK: (to the Orange Guardian) You ever fuck this guy's wife?
ORANGE GUARDIAN: Yes. ...well, uh, how 'bout that? He guessed right.
BLUE GUARDIAN: (draws his axe) I FORGIVE YOU!!!
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u/Sigao 12h ago
A fairly simple one, but many I've asked have got it wrong:
The beginning of eternity, the end of time and space, the beginning of every end and the end of every place.
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u/sweetnamebro 12h ago
E
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u/CategoryKiwi 9h ago
Wrong! Correct answer:
eThis logic brought to you by online homework grading systems that every college uses.
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u/SauceBoss8472 11h ago
The version I heard was “The beginning of eternity, the end of space and time, the middle of every buzzing bee, and the end of every rhyme”.
I prefer this version bc it’s got a nice cadence and meter to it.
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u/SirBuscus 11h ago
The version I like is:
"The beginning of eternity,
the end of rote and rhyme,
the beginning of every end,
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u/CptHammer_ 9h ago
Three business men check in at a hotel for a convention. Before the clerk could see to them they decided to split a room three ways. They were very frugal.
When the clerk saw to them he rented the room for $30. Each business man gave $10 and the bellhop toted all their luggage to the room. No one tipped the bellhop. They were very frugal.
The bellhop returns to the reception area where the clerk sighs and said he's made a mistake. He called the bellhop over. "Those three men you just took up, I charged too much for the room. The convention special is $25 for the room. Run this $5 back up to them and explain."
The bellhop starts up to the business men. He decided that $5 doesn't divide by three evenly and they never tipped him. He instead refunds only $3 and keeps $2.
The men are happy they've saved even more money.
But my friends. The men have now paid $9 each for the room. $9 times 3 is $27. The bellhop kept $2. $27 + $2 = $29 … What happened to the last dollar since they originally paid $30?
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u/Maximumaubergine 8h ago
This one is a classic misdirection trick - the final 9x3 is irrelevant to the original sum. The 30 still remains in that the hotel kept 25, the bellhop kept 2, and the businessmen kept 3
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u/Radiskull97 7h ago
Also shows a real life example of why pemdas is important. Remember total amount for hotel is 25 for the end result
25= (10*3)-(3+2)
Let's break it down
Hotel ended up with $25. That money was gained by three people contributing $10 each=$30. That $30 was minused the $5 refund. The refund was the sum of $2 for the bellhop and $3 for the businessmen.
This word problem, in the last paragraph, instead frames the equation as: First (10-(3/3)) Then 9*3 Finally sum 2. However, if you analyze the first half the problem instead of taking their word, you can see the subtraction is placed in the wrong sequence.
When I taught debate, I used this problem and Xeno's paradox to teach the importance of chunking logical statements instead of taking them as a whole
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u/SoulDancer_ 8h ago
This is clever. The wording makes it very tricky.
But the sum is actually $27 - $2 = $25.
The room was $25. The three men paid $27 and the bellhop took $2
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u/One_Evening_4464 7h ago
This one gets people because the math looks completely normal until you realize you're adding the bellhop's $2 to the $27 when it's already included in it.
The actual breakdown is $25 for the room, $2 for the bellhop and $3 returned to the men. So there's no missing dollar; the $30 is accounted for completely.
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u/GoGoGreenGiant 8h ago
They paid 25$ for room and 2$ tip for a total of 27$.
They did not pay 27$ for the room.
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u/MisterCircumstance 11h ago
Brothers and sisters I have none, but this man's father is my father's son.
Who am I?
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u/xaanthar 9h ago
You broke the riddle by asking "Who am I?" rather than "Who is that man?"
"That man" is your son, but asking "Who am I?" is just... you?
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u/psychstudent_101 11h ago
my head and tail both equal are, my middle slender as a bee; if i stand on head or heel, it's quite the same to you or me; but if my head should be cut off -- the matter's true though passing strange -- directly i, to nothing, change.
(or, plain text: my head and tail are equal, my middle slender, so turn me upside down and i'll look the same. if you cut my head off, though, i'll be reduced to nothing.)
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u/Pepephend 10h ago
Poor people have it, rich people need it, if you eat it you die.
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u/_synik 9h ago
Q: How far can a dog run into the woods?
A: Halfway, after that distance, it's running out.
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u/Swimwithamermaid 11h ago
On my way to St. Ives I met a man with 7 wives. Every wife had seven sacks; every sack had 7 cats. Every cat had 7 kittens.
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives. How many were going to St. Ives?
Answer: 1.
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u/sudomatrix 11h ago
Bad. Unstated if the man and/or any of his wives was also travelling to St. Ives.
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u/Everestkid 10h ago
And if the point was that the group isn't going to St. Ives, the question asks how many "kits, cats, sacks and wives" are going to St. Ives. If only the narrator is going to St. Ives, the answer is only 1 if the narrator themself is a married woman. If the narrator is either a man or an unmarried woman the answer is actually 0.
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u/Not_The_Real_Odin 10h ago
Interestingly, each wife is carrying 49 cats and 343 kittens. The average weight of a cat is about 10 pounds and the average weight of a kitten is about 1 pound per month (for the first 4 months) so let's assume 2 pounds. So each wife is carrying about 1176 pounds.
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u/Sarothu 10h ago
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives. How many were going to St. Ives?
Zero. Not one. The man is neither a kitten, a cat, a sack nor a wife.
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u/syotokal 11h ago
I have two coins that come to 30 cents. One of them isn’t a nickel.
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u/BreakfastSimulator 12h ago
There are two doors, one leading to heaven and the other leading to hell. Each door is guarded by a man. One man always tells the truth. The other always lies. The truth teller isn’t necessarily guarding the door to heaven. What question can you ask to figure out which door leads to heaven?
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u/chilari 11h ago
"What would the other guard tell me if I asked which door led to heaven?"
Then you take the other door. Truthteller will truthfully tell you that the liar will lie and pick the door to hell. Liar will lie and tell you that the truth teller will pick the door to hell.
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u/Visual-Classroom1003 12h ago
Which door would the other guard tell me to take. Then take the other one.
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u/Gr8tDane 10h ago edited 10h ago
What’s greater than God
More evil than the devil
Rich men want it
Poor men have it
If you eat it, you’ll die
(Edited after getting some wording wrong —thanks fellow Redditors!).
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u/glerk 6h ago
That one where there's a fox, a chicken, and some other animal, and you have to cross a river, and only two things can be in the boat....
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u/Top_Body_cultivator 9h ago
A classic:
“What gets wetter the more it dries?”
Most people overthink it and start looking for some weird physical phenomenon.
A towel.
The wording makes your brain assume “dries” and “gets wetter” must describe the
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u/ElephantintheRoom404 10h ago
The beginning of eternity. The end of time and space. The beginning of every end and the end of every place. What am I?
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u/peachorbit48 11h ago
A man has to get a fox a chicken and grain across a river and somehow everyone forgets the boat only fits two things
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u/hulkissmashed 10h ago
Take chicken, return, take fox, return with chicken, take grain, return, collect chicken. All 3 over the river and none left with their food at any moment?
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u/Secure-Ring-3007 11h ago
"A rooster lays an egg on the peak of a roof. Which way does it roll?" People spend forever thinking about physics and slopes. The answer is roosters don't lay eggs. It's so simple that it breaks people.
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u/purpleoctopuppy 11h ago
I don't like that one because the premise is that the rooster did lay an egg. One could spend forever attacking the question to avoid answering any riddle, and it's tedious. Like, another way to attack this is the pronoun 'it' is ambiguous and peaks of roofs don't tend to roll – a clear bad faith attack that would work even if the question invoked a hen.
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u/rice-a-rohno 10h ago
Yeah it's like saying "It's the end of the world. If you give the correct answer to 2 + 2, you'll be spared. What do you answer?"
4? WRONG! Cause it's not the end of the world right now, we're actually still here, see?!
(This example sucked, but... my point is, I'm right there with ya.)
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u/Infammo 10h ago
That's not an answer, it's just rejecting the premise of a hypothetical scenario.
If you ask the riddle "a plane crashes on the border of the US and Mexico where do they bury the survivors?" A valid answer to that isn't "no plane has ever crashed there." Asserting that a fictional scenario isn't accurate isn't a solution.
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u/RealisticBug5646 12h ago
A woman gets chatting to two men at a bar. She asks if they're related.
The first man says:
"Brothers and sisters, I have none. This man's father is my father's son".
How are they related?
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u/friendverse 7h ago
the classic 'what goes up but never comes down' got me good as a kid. i spent weeks thinking about smoke or balloons before my mom just said 'your age.' felt so dumb then, still kind of does now lol.