I stumbled upon a game today, it’s called Petals Around the Rose. It’s played with 5 dice, and you can only be told these three things about the game:
- The name of the game is significant.
- The number of petals comes from the dice, there’s only one answer for each roll and it’s either 0 or an even number.
- You can be told the number of petals after each roll.
Your goal is to figure out how many petals are around the rose before you are told. To play it, visit this page (you need to have a browser that supports Flash).
Supposedly, the smarter you are, the longer it takes you to solve (it took a university professor a year), but I think that it’s just a matter of not over-complicating things. Often you look hard for a solution while it’s right there in front of you the whole time, and this is why you will feel cheated if you mull hard over it. There is another interesting article on this game, it’s a nice read and it’s where I realised the solution to the game (it doesn’t contain spoilers though).
Play it and see how you do.
