Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
Forget about what you see. The problem is solved by eliminating the possibilities, one each hour.
At 12:00, you can eliminate four blue, one red, since the person with the red hat would have left the room.
At 13:00, you eliminate three blue, two red, because two people with red hats would have left the room: each knows he has a red hat, since the other person with a red hat didn't leave an hour ago.
And so forth. By the last hour, the only possibility left is all red hats, and every leaves at once.
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I had an "Aha!" moment there, thank you.
And then I began to think again, which in my case is a dangerous thing to do...
The elimination theory is all very well, but as they can actually see that everyone else has a red hat right from the start, then to me the logic falls down. The reasoning doesn't seem to work as there is no process of elimination to go through. The first two people would never have left, as there were no blue hats on show for them to start going through the reasoning process.