5 Pirates Puzzle
5 Pirates Puzzle
The Puzzle:
5 pirates of different ages have a treasure of 100 gold coins.
On their ship, they decide to split the coins using this scheme:
The oldest pirate proposes how to share the coins, and ALL pirates (including the oldest) vote for or against it.
If 50% or more of the pirates vote for it, then the coins will be shared that way. Otherwise, the pirate proposing the scheme will be thrown overboard, and the process is repeated with the pirates that remain.
As pirates tend to be a bloodthirsty bunch, if a pirate would get the same number of coins if he voted for or against a proposal, he will vote against so that the pirate who proposed the plan will be thrown overboard.
Assuming that all 5 pirates are intelligent, rational, greedy, and do not wish to die, (and are rather good at math for pirates) what will happen?
Replies
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Ankita Katdare#-Link-Snipped-# That is a really good puzzle. Will try to figure out a solution. ☕ -
Prashanth_p@cchiSince it is a 50% vote situation..
the Pirate 1 has to divide the share such that he gets 50% votes that is 3 ppl should
be in his favour...if Pirate 1 divides the share among Pirate 2, 3 ,4 and 5 then its
certain that Pirate 2 wld stil vote against Pirate 1 so that Pirate 1 be killed and
Pirate 2 can be the leader and get more share to his name..so the theory is that the
following Pirate wld want the previous Pirate to be killed so that he can get a bigger
share by reducing the number of pirates....Hence Pirate 1 should divide the treasure
among Pirate 3, and 5 and give nothing to Pirate 2, and 4. And going
by the fact that all the Pirates are greedy, they would want a larger amount to be with
themselves and give little to the others. So even if Pirate 1 gives 1 piece of gold to
Pirate 3, and 5 they would still be satisfied as it would be better than nothing.
Going by that, I guess Pirate 1 wld keep 98 pieces of gold to himself and give 1 each to
Pirate 3,and 5. Am i right? -
silverscorpionThought of a solution and googled it. The actual solution turned out to be quite the opposite. As with most good puzzles, whatever we think intuitively, will most probably be wrong.
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silverscorpionNow that the solution is given, let me give a link that explains better.
Pirate Game
Nice explanation.
Btw, the last part of the above page talks about extending this game. ie., let's say there are 100 coins and 100 pirates. What is the solution then? The first pirate would take 51 coins and give all the rest of the odd numbered pirates 1 coin. If there are 100 coins and 200 pirates, then also every odd numbered pirate would get 1 coin and problem solved. What if there are more than 200 pirates and 100 coins? How would it be split then? -
durga chI thought he would give more to the last 2 youngest gys around to be alive
You are reading an archived discussion.
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