with pleasure understand that all the monks will do as told: upon realising they have the dot, they will kill themselves that night. if there was one monk with a dot, 99 without the dot would see it, he would see 99 without dots and would realise he has the dot and kill himself that night. if there were two monks with dots, let's call them A and B, they would both see 98 monks without dots and 1 monk with a dot, and the 98 monks without dots would see two monks with dots, on the first day. on the second day, monk A would see that monk B with a dot was still alive and would realise that since no other monks had dots, and that monk B didn't kill himself, that monk B would be seeing a dot on his (monk A's) head. monk B would realise that since monk A didn't kill himself, and that no other monks except monk A had a dot on his head, monk A must be seeing a dot on his head. that night they would both kill themselves. the next day all the monks would come back and see that there are only 98 monks, so they would know that A and B were the only two infected monks. the reason it takes 10 days is that the 10 monks with a dot each see 9 monks with dots (they don't see themselves) and the monks without dots see 10 monks with dots. after the 10th day, the monks with dots will see that none of the other 9 monks with a dot killed themselves, and will realise - unless they had commisso and lobster advising them D) - that everyone else sees a dot on THEIR head and will kill themselves that night. the next day the monks will realise that ten are dead and will know that they themselves don't have a dot on their head. PS just in the interest of clearing my good name here the minute commisso posted his solution, i IM'd him asking him if he was serious with it, because of the icecream remark, i thought he might be joking. i only got the standard "it's zen bro, can't explain it to you" answer, and then lobster came up with some crap about a maths professor not understanding it, so i incorrectly presumed there was no solution to this problem, and that all the talk about it was just meaningless jibber jabber. when it dawned on me that these people were actually trying to EXPLAIN it, i realised that there WAS a solution, and went back and solved it.
We were not told that the monks knew how many had the dots. This is vital to trying to solve the riddle. Sorry Daniel, it still doesn't make any sense. If they had been informed that there were 10 of them with dots, they all would have seen either 9 or 10 dots the first night. It would not have taken 10 nights. 10 nights or 100 nights, would not make any difference.
it's not vital. i don't mind explaining it again, but please trust me that the solution doesn't require the monks to know how many had dots. ok?
i think my answer and the long explanation are both correct......because it was not stated if the monks had the dots right away or not...and if they knew there were only 10.
Danny, I never said it was Zen shit and that there is no answer to the riddle -- I said at the time that I could offer no logical explanation as to how I came to the answer... As you can see above, Lobster and I, both tried to explain it to you in a logical manner... I guess it wasn't sooo hard to come up with your solution since we both served it to you hours before hand... If you would have just calmed down and not got your panites in a bunch and proclaimed the riddle/answer as BS from the beginning perhaps you could have saved yourself some grief...
It only works if there is one infected. If there is more than one infected, everyone has to know the exact number that are infected for it to work. In both those cases they would kill themselves the first night.
gordon, we can just imagine that the monks had developed the dots and that they had all noticed them at some point in time BEFORE they the head priest informed them that the dots were symptoms of a deadly disease and that any monk with a dot must kill himself. get it? the monks already had the dots. they just didn't do anything about it. they didn't know what the dots meant. and, of course, they didn't discuss the dots with each other, since they NEVER talk. WHEN the monks actually got the dots is immaterial.
Yeah dan you just went around in a big circle to essentialy say the same thing it took me about 2secs to come up with...
commisso, i never asked you for how YOU got the answer. that is, i never asked you what mental processes were involved in you working it out. i asked you to explain your answer to me. much like hiaaooo and gordon are asking now. if you remember our conversation, i asked you if you were serious with your explanation, because of the ice cream comment i thought you were joking about it. i think the problem we have is that you think when i ask for an explanation that i'm asking you to explain how you arrived at your answer. i'm not. i'm simply asking you to explain your answer TO ME. your response was "i can't explain it, but i've answered haven't i". that didnt' make any sense to me. when the question posed is HOW did the monks know, the only way to answer that question is to EXPLAIN HOW the monks knew. that was something, i guess beacause of the misunderstanding i outlined above, you were unwiling to do. so, when you started talking all that stuff about right brain this, left brain that, i assumed that YOU didn't consider the problem to HAVE a solution. then when lobster started prattling about some mumbo jumbo and the both of you seemed to agree with each other, i - INCORRECTLY (sue me!) - assumed that, as i explained to you in private, it wasn't really a "riddle" at all, just some kind of a koan to muse about. SO, thinking that there was NO SOLUTION, i couldn't make head or tail of what you or lobster were saying, BECAUSE i wasn't even considering that you were attempting to explain anything to me. it's a great example of how powerful preconceptions are. there's a trading lesson in all this! then, when i finally realised that there was indeed a solution to this, i went about solving it. looking back, i can see how your attempted explanations could have been useful - they could also have been a lot clearer - but i was operating - interpreting your responses - under the paradigm "there is no solution". my sincerest apologies to all who had to wade through this.
get off the high horse commisso. i can assure you that, given the way our private conversation went, you certainly not blameless in this misunderstanding.