Your enemy challenges you to play Russian Roulette with a 6-cylinder pistol (meaning it has room for 6 bullets). He puts 2 bullets into the gun in consecutive slots, and leaves the next four slots blank. He spins the barrel and hands you the gun. You point the gun at yourself and pull the trigger. It doesn't go off. Your enemy tells you that you need to pull the trigger one more time, and that you can choose to either spin the barrel at random, or not, before pulling the trigger again. Spinning the barrel will position the barrel in a random position.
Assuming you'd like to live, should you spin the barrel or not before pulling the trigger again?
You are better off shooting again without spinning the barrel.
Given that the gun didn't fire the first time, it was pointing to one of the four empty slots. Because your enemy spun the cylinder randomly, it would have been pointing to any of these empty slots with equal probability. Three of these slots would not fire again after an additional trigger-pull, and one of them would. Thus, by not spinning the barrel, there is a 1/4 chance that pulling the trigger again would fire the gun.
Alternatively, if you spin the barrel, it will point to each of the 6 slots with equal probability. Because 2 of these 6 slots have bullets in them, there would be a 2/6 = 1/3 chance that the gun would fire after spinning the barrel.
Thus, you are better off not spinning the barrel.
Find a short hidden message in the list of words below.
carrot fiasco nephew spring rabbit
sonata tailor bureau legacy corona
travel bikini object happen soften
picnic option waited effigy adverb
report accuse animal shriek esteem
oyster
Starting with the first two words, take the first and last letters, reading from left to right. Example: Carrot fiascO "from these pairs" the message is as follows:
CONGRATULATIONS CODE BREAKER
Peter celebrated his birthday on one day, and two days later his older twin brother, Paul, celebrated his birthday. How could this be?
When the mother of the twins went into labor, she was travelling by boat. The older twin, Paul, was born first, barely on March 1st. The boat then crossed a time zone, and the younger twin was born on February the 28th. In a leap year the younger twin celebrates his birthday two days before his older brother.
