Comments on: Hangin’ With Howard Lederer

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:30:59 +0000

Is there guaranteed to be at least 1 of each color?

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:30:31 +0000

Darn you! I had it down to 99/100 otherwise on #1.

*ponders*

By: Heraldk

Heraldk — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:49:22 +0000

This is my most commented post on the site by far!

The red/blue hats are assigned randomly to each person, so you can’t assume there is an equal number.

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:36:26 +0000

On #1 there … are there an equal number of red and blue hats?

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:38:44 +0000

I actually had an answer for a couple of these, and then realized I can’t read to save my life. So, I am going to sit and stare at this all day some more and blame you for my lack of productivity :p

By: darse

darse — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:11:01 +0000

“Hey, how’s it going? I see you have the number 37 on your hat. What else is new?” :-p

First two are okay, but not too tough. I kind of angled the last problem a bit by looking at what information we have and don’t have. The problem is quite constrained — few degrees of freedom makes it easier to get on the right path. I clicked on the right idea rather quickly, but it took longer to work out the exact details.

I’m not going to give you as many hints as Howard did though. He was way way too soft on you guys — he gave me *nothing*!

By: Heraldk

Heraldk — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 21:20:13 +0000

Yeah, I guess I didn’t make it clear. The 2nd problem requires that no communication between people can happen. Everyone has time to look at each other’s hats, but you can’t talk or indicate anything to each other in any way.

This problem was posed late in the evening so I haven’t had much of a chance to think about it yet. I hope to get around to it soon though :)

By: Kepi

Kepi — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 21:04:11 +0000

The seoncd one seems pretty easy, unless I’m misunderstanding the rules of the scenario.

Before starting to let the people into the room, tell them the following:
1) the first person in is designated as the Picker
2) the Picker then watches as the subsequent people come into the room
3) if he sees two (or more people) with the same number, he places them together; everyone in that little grouping just calls out the numbers on the others’ hats
4) if he sees two or more hats that, when summed, add up to another number on a different person’s hat, stick them together in a group, indicating which is the “sum” hat and which are the components of it. The “sum” guy calls out the sum of the other hats in the group