[Vala] Lord of the Rings riddles

[_grayswandir_]

Hey, folks! A few days ago, I posted a couple of LotR-related riddles in my journal, but I haven't had anyone come up with the answers yet. I figured I'd better give you guys a shot at them. ;) Sorry to those who see this twice!

Comments

[summonerluna]

Still not sure on the second one, but as for the first...

Eowyn is wearing a Silver Helm. She knows this because:

There are only two gold helms, therefore she and Eomer cannot both be wearing gold, or Theodred would have known he was in Silver. If Eowyn were in gold, Eomer would have known his must be silver (for the same reasoning as before: if Theodred did not guess, then either Eomer or his sister or both must be in silver). Thus Eowyn would have known that both Eomer and Theodred must have seen at least one silver helm in front of them or they would have known the location of the two gold helms and could have guessed their own color.

I hope that reasoning makes sense...I solved it fairly quickly, but then it took me a bit of time to figure out how to word it. Cute riddles!

[_grayswandir_]

Yep, exactly! :) And heh, yes, I agree that explaining the logic behind that one is more difficult than figuring the answer out. It sort of feels like you can't explain it -- like either you just intuitively get why Eomer's answer would be different if she were in gold, or... you don't. Anyway, I'm glad you got the answer!

[farmhouse]

I'm stumped on the second one :(

[_grayswandir_]

Yeah, the second one's definitely harder than the first. Since it's been a while and nobody's got it, I'll just post the answer here.

So, the ten Dwarves have a piece of parchment and a quill. They pass these around in a circle, and each Dwarf writes down a random number of pounds of gold on the paper, and remembers what number he wrote. The tenth Dwarf adds all of the numbers together.

Then they pass the paper around again, and each Dwarf calculates the discrepancy between the amount of gold he actually got and the amount he wrote down, and adds or subtracts accordingly from the total. (For instance, if he received 100 pounds of gold, and wrote down 400 pounds on the paper, he would now subtract 300 from the total.)

After the total has been adjusted to correspond to the actual amounts the Dwarves received, they divide it by ten, and presto! An average. :)

[farmhouse]

I would have never guessed that haha

Oh and great riddles by the way!