My co-worker won't tell me the answer and I'm pissed.

A village's god visits tribesmen telling them he would mark the faces of an undisclosed #. Whoever is marked must go up to the volcano and jump in and kill themselves. If not, the god will destroy the village.

They must figure it out, each on their own w/ no help from others. Obviously, mirrors/reflections/communication etc are not allowed.

1st day they all go up to the volcano and no one jumps in.
Same thing happens the 2nd day.
3rd day, 3 of them jump in and the village is saved.

How did they figure it out?

 

what

 

Actually, there were only 3 guys living in the village. They had been practising so much gay sex together so they reasoned that if one of them had it, the other guys quite surely had it too.

What do I win?

 

 

Yeah, I heard it's a pretty difficult one, so I'm told. This supposedly brilliant associate of an associate figured it out during an interview for a job. I don't know the answer.

 

tell your co-worker to stop being a ***** and give us the answer.

 

************* pushed the marked face dudes in

 

that's what i was thinking.

 

Your coworker is very likely leaving out some detail he forgot, like the number of villagers or something as these riddles usually have some more info. I mean there is a huge difference between 10 villagers and 1000.

 

+1. I'm thinking we're missing a few details.

 

There is a missing part of the riddle. It is that the person or persons with the mark must kill themselves on the coresponding day. Meaning that if there is one person with the mark they kill themselves on the first day if there are two people with the mark then they kill themselves on the second day etc.

So if there was one person with the mark he would look around the village and see that no one had the mark and he would assume he had the mark and would jump into the volcano on the first day.
If there were two people with the mark then the person with the second mark would see someone with a mark, but since they didn't jump on the first day that meant that there was a second person with the mark and since he didn't see the second mark that would mean he was the one with the second mark.
And so on with the third person.

 

Nothing is missing. Fid, I said the same thing, but no one knows how many tribesmen are marked. They were all marked on the day the god spoke to them, not in the following days.

I asked him about the # of villagers. He said it doesn't really matter. Then he said how about 100 just for the heck of it.

If there is some part of the riddle missing, which I repeated to him a couple times, then I will personally be beating him down.

 

That is the missing part of the riddle.
They are all marked on the first day.
Your coworker deserves a beatdown.
Be sure to take pictures of his/her wimpering prone form after you let him/her know that they shouldn't be repeating things they don't understand.

 

So what's the answer?

 

i would think that they can see the marks on each others faces?

and that someone would tell them they have **** on their faces and they need to die

 

I'll try to word it a bit better this time.

If there was one person with the mark he would look around the village and see that no one had the mark and he would assume he had the mark and would jump into the volcano on the first day.

So if there were two people with the mark (Savage A, Savage B) both A and B would see someone with the mark and so they wouldn't jump on the first day thinking that the other was the one marked. But since no one jumped the first day both A and B would understand that would mean there was more than one person marked. A sees B with a mark on his forehead but no one else marked so he logically deduces that he is the other marked savage. Both Aand B jump into the volcano on the second day.

And so on if there was a third person marked.

 

but what if noone is marked?

 

Then no one jumps in on day Zero and the village is saved.

 

Lol, well that's easy one or more of the natives cracks under the strain and pushes the god, or more preferably the person who comes up with these inane riddles, into the volcano.