Alright. Four prisoners are due for execution. The warden, being a sporting man, provides them a challenge that could secure their release. He shows them four hats, two white and two black.
He then blindfolds them, stands them in line, and puts one hat on each head before removing their blindfolds. Thusly:
---------------->
B || W B W
4__ 3_2_1
They are facing in the direction of the arrow, and the double pipe is a wall. So 2 can see 1, 3 can see 1 and 2, but 1 and 4 can’t see anyone.
The warden gives them a full minute before the firing squad takes aim, and if any of them can say, definitively, what color hat is on their own head, the four can go free.
Number 2 knows his hat is black, because he can see 3’s is white, and since 1 can see 2 and 3’s hats, if they were both white, 1 would have known his was black and shouted that out. Since he didn’t 2 can be confident his hat is black.
Is this legal? This seems an extreme test of prisoners under duress. They cannot be expected to be at their most logical under those conditions. I move for a mistrial, your honour!
I’m rather fond of the false-logic: the prisoner is told that he will be executed by the end of the week, but he won’t know which day it’ll be. Aha, he says, well it can’t be Sunday, because I’d know by the end of Saturday that it must be Sunday. And therefore it can’t be Saturday, because I’d know by the end of Friday that it must be Saturday. And so on - so you can’t execute me at all!
Which leaves him briefly surprised when he’s executed on Thursday.
I’m fond of false premises. If you come across two doors with two guards and a sign that reads, “One guard only speaks the truth, the other always lies,” how do you know the sign is telling the truth?
That’s probably an easier way to solve it than jumping straight to the solution, although there’s always the possibility that someone here has a very lateral mind
Now I re-read, the premise of where each door leads to is not been set up. I was flinging it from memory, where the riddle is that one door leads to freedom, and the other one to death, and one guard always lies, and the other always tells the truth.
We know this is an American location because it’s a sidewalk
The only American mint I know is in Kentucky.
Plate is a word for covering things in a metal.
Quite clearly. This is the body of a Chinese scientist who had given a nuclear weapon to a gold smuggler so he could irradiate the USAs bullion reserve to increase the value of his own gold supplies.
Probably with the assistance of an all female flying team.
Another example:
You encounter a sphinx.
It says, “Answer my riddle and you may pass.”
After a bit more, you correctly answer the riddle.
The sphinx attacks and eats you. “I lied” it says as it picks its teeth with your bones.
