I heard a brain-teaser today, and I think I have the answer, but it seems odd to me -- it relies on the other people in the puzzle not being as smart as the person who answers.
Three men are seated around a table. Each man is wearing a hat, either blue or white. Each can see the hat on the other two men, but not his own. They all know that there is at least one blue hat among them. The goal is for one of them to announce the color of the hat on his head. If he is right, he gets a million dollars. If he is wrong, he gets beheaded.

One of the three men sees that the other two men have blue hats. After half an hour, he stands up and announces his hat is...

Below is my thought process and conclusion.
Let's say A and B are wearing blue hats, and C is the man who stands up announces his color. If C's hat were white, then A would see a white and a blue hat and not be able to answer properly (since A's hat could be white or blue). Since A does not answer, B knows that there is only one white hat among the three -- and since A's hat is blue and C's hat is white, B knows his hat is blue.

But neither A nor B does such a thing. Since that has not happened, C knows that both A and B are looking at two blue hats. So C's hat is blue.

Question: why didn't one of the other two men do this?! I don't know.

_____________________________________________________
Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker.
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;

In reply to (OT) Meditate on this brain-teaser by japhy

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