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4 Criminals

4 criminals are caught and are to be punished. The judge allows them to be freed if they can solve a puzzle. If they do not, they will be hung. They agreed.

The 4 criminals are lined up on some steps (shown in picture). They are all facing in the same direction. A wall separates the fourth man from the other three.

4 criminals

So to summarise :
Man 1 can see Man 2 and Man 3.
Man 2 can see Man 3.
Man 3 can see none of the others.
Man 4 can see none of the others.

The criminals are wearing hats. They are told that there are two white hats and two black hats. The men initially don’t know what colour hat they are wearing. They are told to shout out the colour of the hat that they are wearing as soon as they know for certain what colour it is.

They are not allowed to turn round or move. They are not allowed to talk to each other. They are not allowed to take their hats off.

Who is the first person to shout out and why?

Riddle Answer

Poisonous Milk Bottle

You are trapped in a room with no food.

After 2 days, you are given 4 bottles of milk out of which one bottle is poisonous.

There is a rat in the room and to find out which bottle is poisonous you can feed milk samples to that rat. But the challenge is that the poison takes effect exactly 10 hours from feeding.

You have only 24 hours in your hand within which you must consume 3 bottles of milk to satisfy your hunger or else you will die.

What strategy would ensure that you drink 3 bottles of milk within 24 hours and survive?

Answer

Feed the rat with milk from one bottle every 1 hour. In this way, if the rat dies after 10 hours, then the first bottle is poisonous.

If the rat does not die after 10 hours, you can drink from milk from the first bottle.

Similarly, if the rat dies after 11 hours, then the second bottle is poisonous, if it dies in 12 hours, the third bottle is poisonous.

However, if the rat doesn’t die even after 12 hours, then the fourth bottle is poisonous and you need not test further.

In this way, you will need a maximum of 12 hours to drink 3 bottles of milk.