Brain Teaser #98: 9 Women Cheat - What Happens?

  • Thread starter Thread starter davilla
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Brain
AI Thread Summary
In a Hungarian community of married mathematicians, a tradition dictates that a man who discovers his wife's infidelity must hang himself at noon. When nine women cheat, the news spreads quickly among the townsfolk, but the husbands remain unaware of their own wives' actions. Each husband, upon hearing the gossip about the other women, deduces that his own wife must also be unfaithful. As a result, all nine husbands hang themselves simultaneously on the ninth noon after the affairs are revealed. This scenario illustrates the logical reasoning of the mathematicians and the tragic consequences of their deductions.
davilla
Messages
88
Reaction score
0
I heard this one a while back:

A Hungarian community of married mathematicians has the following tradition: should any man determine that his wife cheated on him, he shall hang himself at noon. The townsfolk being rather introverted, there is little gossip except when there is an affair. In such case everyone in the town hears about the infidelity by nightfall excepting, of course, the cheating couple's spouses. So if a man were to hear gossip but were not told of any affiar, he would determine, being the logical mathematician that he is, that his own wife was involved, and would thus hang himself at noon the next day.

On one particularly steamy summer day, nine women break their vows with other men. What is the result?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Nine heads hang, on the ninth noon following that steamy summer day, and none before.
 
Wait, I can make that a little more alliterative, and perhaps poetic (but still maybe wrong) :

Nine necks in nine nooses, nine noons after, and none ere that.
 
Gokul43201 said:
Nine heads hang, on the ninth noon
Gokul with the point!
 
Similar to the 2024 thread, here I start the 2025 thread. As always it is getting increasingly difficult to predict, so I will make a list based on other article predictions. You can also leave your prediction here. Here are the predictions of 2024 that did not make it: Peter Shor, David Deutsch and all the rest of the quantum computing community (various sources) Pablo Jarrillo Herrero, Allan McDonald and Rafi Bistritzer for magic angle in twisted graphene (various sources) Christoph...
Thread 'My experience as a hostage'
I believe it was the summer of 2001 that I made a trip to Peru for my work. I was a private contractor doing automation engineering and programming for various companies, including Frito Lay. Frito had purchased a snack food plant near Lima, Peru, and sent me down to oversee the upgrades to the systems and the startup. Peru was still suffering the ills of a recent civil war and I knew it was dicey, but the money was too good to pass up. It was a long trip to Lima; about 14 hours of airtime...

Similar threads

Replies
90
Views
72K
Back
Top