Right, I said I'd post this one. However, I'm warning everybody that this is one of the most difficult riddles to grasp that I know of, EVEN when you know the answer. But I've told this riddle a couple of times now, and every time I've spent about half an hour explaining the answer and examening the answer from many different angles -- What I'm saying is: I'm convinced the answer is completely correct. And I'm afraid most people won't believe me at first <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> I didn't believe it at first <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> Anyway, here I go (please skip this riddle if you get easily frustrated <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />)
There is a Tibetan monastery filled with a number of monks. The number of monks is more than one, and not unreasonably large.
God visits the monks one night and tells them that he is planning on destroying the world unless they can solve a puzzle. He puts a red dot on the foreheads of a certain number of monks, X. X is greater than zero.
Then he takes away all means of communication between the monks, and all means by which the monks can see themselves. No mirrors, no hand signals, no nothing. Each monk can see all the other monks, and see if another monk has a dot on his head or not, but he cannot see himself, and he cannot communicate in any way with any other monk.
God then says that all of the monks with dots, and only those monks with dots, must jump off of the cliff next to the monastery and sacrifice themselves to save the world, at EXACTLY the same moment, on EXACTLY the same day.
The next morning, all of the monks from the monastery walk out to the edge of the cliff. They pause and look around, and then walk quickly back to the monastery.
The second morning, all of the monks from the monastery walk to the edge of the cliff. They pause, look, and walk back to the monastery.
The third morning, all of the monks walk to the edge of the cliff. And then all of the monks with dots, and only those monks with dots walk to the cliff edge and jump off at the exact same moment.
The question: how many monks jumped, and how did they organize the jump?
This is the original version. It think however that you should replace the "EXACT same moment" with "12:00 p.m." -- so that the monks cannot choose the exact moment, but they can still choose the day -- to leave all doubt out of the answer. Not that it really matters a whole lot. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />
Enjoy <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
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