Someone who has good logical sense? thank you! will pick best answer!!?

Question

The scene:

three men are facing a wall and in line.

? ? !

1 2 3

o- o- o-

facing ---> that way

A hat is placed on each guy, while their eyes are closed.

Hats are slected from a barrel that originally contained

3 white hats

2 black hats

The man 1 at the back sees the two people in front of him

and SAYS HE DOESNT KNOw WHAT COLOR HE IS WEARING

The man 2 in the middle, who sees only the hat of the man 3 says he doesnt know what color he is wearing

Finally the man in the front, who cant see no hats says

HE KNOWS WHAT COLOR HE"S WEARING

what color ?

How does he know?

thank you for taking the time to read this and answering it with good answers :)

Answer 1

Since man 1 doesn't know his hat color, he cannot be seeing two black hats because he would know he had a white one. therefore, he must see

1. Either White on 2, Black on 3                                  

2. Black on 3, White on 2                                    

3. Or White on both                                                    

1   ?   ?   ?

2   W   B   W

3    B   W   W

Man 2 couldn't have seen black because he would have know that he (man 2) had a white hat. therefore, he must have seen a white hat on man 3.

Answer 2

tricky......

obviously, man 2 + 3 are wearing opposite hats since man 3 doesnt know what he is wearin but they could also be wearin white hats?>>!!??

black obviously, because they are wearin different hats

1     2      3

b     w     b

YAY I THINK I FIGURED IT OUT!!!!!!

Answer 3

its black he asked asked the guys behind him.

Answer 4

If man number 1 saw two black hats he would have known he was wearing white.

If man number 2 saw a black hat he'd know that if he, too, had a black hat, man number 1 would have known he was wearing white.

Man number 3 knows that 3 and 2 can't both be wearing black. He knows that if he (man 3) was wearing black, man two would know what he was wearing. Therefore, man 3 must be wearing white.

=) Good one, made me think! ♥

Answer 5

The 3rd man's hat is white.

These are the possibilities of the men wearing the hats:

1  2  3

o- o- o-

w w w

b w w

b b w

b w b

w b b

Man 1 says he doesn't know what colour his hats is, because he sees one white hat and one black hat in front of him or, he sees both whites in front of him. If both hats in front of him is black, he'd know that his is white, because there's only 2 black hats. So, that means we can cancel out the last possibility of w b b, and we merge the same possibilites together, getting this result :

1  2  3

o- o- o-

? w w

? b w

? w b

Now man 2, knowing that man 1 doesn't know his own hat, can assume that his hat is not black, even if man's 3 hat is black. So, since he can see what man's 3 hat is, he'd know his hat has the possibility of being opposite colour, or white. Let's take a look at the last option, ? w b. Now, we already know that, both man 2 and 3 hats cannot be black.

Since we want the situation to fit our status quo of man 2 not knowing what his hat is, we have to take away the last option, because in the last option of ? w b, man 2 can easily guess his hat is white, because he know his hat cannot be black since man 3's hat is black already.

so with that, we're left with 2 options;

1  2  3

o- o- o-

?  ?  w

?  ?  w

If man 3 is smart enough to work this logic out in his head, he knows that his hat is white, which is what the correct answer is =).