When is the solution to a logic puzzle illogical? When it’s given out on Radio 4’s Today programme, which offered its listeners a brain teaser to get the synapses working over the breakfast cereal.
Except when the big reveal was, er, revealed, it turned out to be the wrong answer.
John Humphrys issued the challenge at 7.30am on Thursday in his best Mastermind voice (this guy should host a quizshow). In case you missed it (it’s an old one, but a good one...)
There were three prisoners, one of whom was blind.
They were offered their freedom if they could succeed in the following game. Their jailer produced three white hats and two red hats and, in the dark, placed a hat on each prisoner.
The prisoners were then taken into the light where, except for the blind man, they could see one another (but they could not see the hat on their own head).
The game was for any prisoner to state correctly the colour of the hat he himself was wearing.
The jailer asked one of the men who could see if he knew, and the man said ‘no’.
Then the jailer asked the other man who could see if he knew, and his answer was ‘no’.
The blind man at this point correctly stated the colour hat he was wearing, winning the game and freedom for all three.
What colour hat was he wearing, and how did he know?
If you don’t want to know the answer, look away now. No, seriously, look away now.
Want to know now? Okay. Humphrys’ co-presenter Sarah Montague told listeners the blind prisoner must have been wearing a red hat, only to tweet a little bit later that no, in fact it was a white hat.
After all that, I said RED hat. It should have been WHITE hat!!! #r4today @BBCr4today
— Sarah Montague (@Sarah_Montague) April 16, 2015
For further elucidation, look no further than Today editor Jamie Angus, who took to Twitter to explain the solution in 140 characters or less (no easy task).
He knows this as if he were wearing a red hat one of the other would have seen two reds, and known they we wearing white. Simples #r4today
— Jamie Angus (@grvlx001) April 16, 2015
We’re still not entirely convinced – especially as Angus later tweeted that he was “right but for the wrong reasons”.
So over to someone who knows a bit about this sort of thing, Dara O Briain, who demonstrated a similar sort of thing on the Graham Norton Show a while back (starting about 30 minutes in). But he used four hats not five - is this a deal breaker?
Is it too late to pass? Readers, it’s over to you.
