Test your skills of deduction with the September 2020 edition of Riddle Me This: Stones, Jars, Life, Death.
You are a prisoner in a strange land. You have been sentenced to death but are being given one chance to live. The king of the land has decided to let you play a simple game to determine your fate.
You are presented with two clay jars. One contains 100 white stones, and the other 100 black stones. You are allowed to redistribute these stones any way that you like, but when you are finished all stones must be in the jars. After you have finished, both jars will be shaken up, you will be blindfolded, and presented one of the two jars at random. You will pick one stone out of the jar given to you. If the stone is white, your life will be spared, and if it is black, you will be executed immediately.
How should you redistribute the stones to give yourself the best chance of survival?
Click to Reveal Answer
The picture presented with the riddle isn’t consistent with the solution provided. How does one get 199 stones into a clay jar that barely holds 100 stones? Instead, put 1/2 of the black stones in the bottom of each each jar and 1/2 the white stones in top of each jar. Shaking will still leave mostly white stones in top of each jar.