## Inscribed triangles and tetrahedra

The following problems appeared in The Riddler. They involve randomly picking points on a circle or sphere and seeing if the resulting shape contains the center or not.

Problem 1: Choose three points on a circle at random and connect them to form a triangle. What is the probability that the center of the circle is contained in that triangle?

Problem 2: Choose four points at random (independently and uniformly distributed) on the surface of a sphere. What is the probability that the tetrahedron defined by those four points contains the center of the sphere?

Here is my solution to both problems:
[Show Solution]

## The troll and the dwarves

This Riddler puzzle is a classic! Can you save the dwarves from the troll?

A giant troll captures 10 dwarves and locks them up in his cave. That night, he tells them that in the morning he will decide their fate according to the following rules:

1. The 10 dwarves will be lined up from shortest to tallest so each dwarf can see all the shorter dwarves in front of him, but cannot see the taller dwarves behind him.
2. A white or black dot will be randomly put on top of each dwarf’s head so that no dwarf can see his own dot but they can all see the tops of the heads of all the shorter dwarves.
3. Starting with the tallest, each dwarf will be asked the color of his dot.
4. If the dwarf answers incorrectly, the troll will kill the dwarf.
5. If the dwarf answers correctly, he will be magically, instantly transported to his home far away.
6. Each dwarf present can hear the previous answers, but cannot hear whether a dwarf is killed or magically freed.

The dwarves have the night to plan how best to answer. What strategy should be used so the fewest dwarves die, and what is the maximum number of dwarves that can be saved with this strategy?

Extra credit: What if there are only five dwarves?

Here is my solution:
[Show Solution]

## The honest prince

This Riddler puzzle is about randomly generating convex quadrilaterals.

You’re the most eligible bachelorette in the kingdom, and you’ve decided to marry a prince. The king has invited you to his castle so that you may choose from among his three sons. The eldest prince is honest and always tells the truth. The youngest prince is dishonest and always lies. The middle prince is mischievous and tells the truth sometimes and lies the rest of the time. Because you will be forever married to one of the princes, you want to marry the eldest (truth-teller) or the youngest (liar) because at least you know where you stand with each. But there’s a problem: You can’t tell the princes apart just by looking, and the king will grant you only one yes-or-no question that you may address to only one of the brothers.

What yes-or-no question can you ask that will ensure that you do not marry the middle prince?

Here is my solution:
[Show Solution]

## Space race

This Riddler puzzle is about a game involving filling up the space on a square table using coins.

Two players are seated at a square table. The first player places a coin on the table, the second places a coin on the table, and they carry on placing coins one after another, with the only condition being that the coins are not allowed to touch. The winner is the person who places the final coin on the table, meaning that he or she fills the last remaining space between the other coins.

The table has to be larger than a single coin, and all the coins placed must be identically sized. If the players play optimally, is one of the two players guaranteed to win? If so, what is the winning strategy?

Need a hint?
[Show Solution]

Here is my solution:
[Show Solution]

## How many bananas can the camel carry?

This Riddler puzzle is a simple twist on a classic.

You have a camel and 3,000 bananas. You would like to sell your bananas at the bazaar 1,000 miles away. Your loyal camel can carry at most 1,000 bananas at a time. However, it has an insatiable appetite and quite the nose for bananas — if you have bananas with you, it will demand one banana per mile traveled. In the absence of bananas on his back, it will happily walk as far as needed to get more bananas, loyal beast that it is. What should you do to get the largest number of bananas to the bazaar? What is that number?

Here is my solution.
[Show Solution]

## The blue-eyed islanders

Today’s Riddler problem is another classic. The current incarnation of the puzzle is about error-prone mathematicians, while the classic version is about blue-eyed islanders.

A university has 10 mathematicians, each one so proud that, if she learns that she made a mistake in a paper, no matter how long ago the mistake was made, she resigns the next Friday. To avoid resignations, when one of them detects a mistake in the work of another, she tells everyone else but doesn’t inform the mistake-maker. All of them have made mistakes, so each one thinks only she is perfect. One Wednesday, a super-mathematician, whom all respect and believe, comes to visit. She looks at all the papers and says: “Someone here has made a mistake.”

What happens then? Why?

Here is the solution:
[Show Solution]

## The puzzle of the pirate booty

Today’s puzzle was posed on the Riddler blog, but it’s actually a classic among problem-solving enthusiasts, and is commonly known as the pirate game. Here is the formulation used in the Riddler:

Ten Perfectly Rational Pirate Logicians (PRPLs) find 10 (indivisible) gold pieces and wish to distribute the booty among themselves.

The pirates each have a unique rank, from the captain on down. The captain puts forth the first plan to divide up the gold, whereupon the pirates (including the captain) vote. If at least half the pirates vote for the plan, it is enacted, and the gold is distributed accordingly. If the plan gets fewer than half the votes, however, the captain is killed, the second-in-command is promoted, and the process starts over. (They’re mutinous, these PRPLs.)

Pirates always vote by the following rules, with the earliest rule taking precedence in a conflict:

1. Self-preservation: A pirate values his life above all else.
2. Greed: A pirate seeks as much gold as possible.
3. Bloodthirst: Failing a threat to his life or bounty, a pirate always votes to kill.

Under this system, how do the PRPLs divide up their gold?

Extra credit: Solve the generalized problem where there are P pirates and G gold pieces.

Here is the solution to the main problem:
[Show Solution]

And here is a solution to the general case:
[Show Solution]

If this sort of problem interests you, I recommend taking a crack at the riddle of the blue-eyed islanders, or the unfaithful husbands. More information here as well.
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