Last week, during a roundtable with small-business owners, President Trump meandered off topic and claimed that the Environmental Protection Agency was solving the problem presented by low-flow toilets, which need to be flushed "10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once." (Consumer Reports told CBS News that theleast efficient models take four or five flushes.) (Via the New Yorker)
A hat puzzle
Each of three people is wearing either a red hat or a blue hat. Each can see the colour of the others' hats but not her own. Each is told to raise her hand if she sees a red hat on another player. The first to guess the colour of her own hat correctly wins. All three raise their hands. A few minutes pass in which no guesses are made, and then one says "red" and wins. How did she know the colour of her hat?
1. I bought the world's worst thesaurus yesterday. Not only is it terrible, it's terrible.
2. I saw an ad in a shop window that said "Television for sale — $1- volume stuck on full". I thought: "I can't turn that down".
3. I went for a job interview and the manager said, "We're looking for someone who is responsible." "Well, I'm your man." I replied, "In my last job, whenever anything went wrong, they said I was responsible."
(Via @TheTommyCooper)
Good on NZ Post
"Received a parcel yesterday - stamps I haven't seen for a long while!" writes Brent. "NZ Post still honoured them!"
The hat puzzle answer:
All three raised their hands, so each can see at least one red hat. This means that at least two of the hats are red; if two or more were blue then there'd be at least one player who didn't raise her hand. But any player who can see a blue hat can immediately infer that her own hat must be red, because she can see a red-wearing player whose hand is raised. In the puzzle this doesn't happen: All three players raise their hands and yet none makes this inference. That allows one of the players to conclude that none of them is wearing a blue hat; all three hats must be red.
