Re: Difficult puzzle

In article <d5sgd6$7bn$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
mareg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx () wrote:
> In the version involving unfaithful wives (or husbands if you prefer), the
> suicides 39 days later are induced by a departing frustrated missionary
> shouting "there has been unfaithfulness on this island" to the assembled
> gathering of all islanders.

I think the most interesting formulation is the one with the red and
blue dots:

In a village, everyone as part of their initiation is given either a
red or blue dot on their forehead. They are not told what color
their dot is.

If one ever finds out the color of his dot, he kills himself that
night (in a particular ritualistic way that is only used as a result
of dot discovery, so everyone else will know that this was the
reason for suicide).

At the daily village meeting, everyone sees everyone else and can
easily see all the other dots.

On day a visitor drives into town, during the meeting, and says,
"Interesting...at least one of you has a blue dot on your
forehead!", and drives off.

What happens?

The answer is that is that k days later, where k is the number of blue
dots in the village, all the blue dot people suicide, and then the next
day all the red dot people suicide.

That raises a second question. Suppose that k is >=2. Then everyone in
the village already knows that there is at least one blue dot, so it
would seem that the visitor has not conveyed any new information. So
how does his statement trigger this tragedy?

--
--Tim Smith
.

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