In an apartment complex in New York there are one hundred married couples. When one of the husbands cheats on his wife with one of the other wives, his wife has no idea. With the large amount of gossip in the complex, all of the other wives know he is cheating. If a wife finds out that her husband is cheating on her, she kills him the following morning. Someone anonymously sends an email to all of the wives in the building saying that at least 1 man is cheating on his wife in the building.
How many husbands will be killed and how long will it take?
May 20th, 2015 | Category: 
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Well, I guess assuming the wives are logical, yet at the same time blindly accept the email to be true.
0 cheating husbands = 100 dead husbands the next day, as no wife has heard a rumor of a cheater, so all assume it is their mate.
1 cheating husband = 1 dead husband the next day, as only one wife has not heard the rumors, so she knows here hubby is the dude.
2 cheating husbands = 2 dead after 2 days. Everyone heard of at least one cheating husband, so no action the 1st night, but then when they don’t hear of the death, those who know of only one cheating husband can assume their husband is the 2nd cheater and they take care of it the following night.
This pattern would continue up to
100 cheating husbands = 100 dead husbands after 100 days. Although, maybe if you heard every other wife’s husband was cheating on them, you could assume yours was as well. In that case:
99 cheating husbands = 1 dead the 1st night (the one who was not really cheating, but that wife knew of 99 cheating husbands so assumed hers was one as well)
100 cheating husbands = 100 dead the 1st night (all wives knew of 99 cheating husbands, so correctly assumed their husband was cheating too).
Oops, I forgot to complete my 2nd case of 99 cheating husbands, 1 dead the 1st night (incorrectly assumed by the wife who knew of 99 cheating husbands) then the other 99 dead the 2nd night when they figured out the flaw the initial wife made.
Also, when I said dead the 1st night, I mean dead the 1st morning. I’m sloppy – but NOT cheating!
Where x is equal to the number of cheating husbands, on the xth day x husbands will be killed.
This is because each woman being cheated on knows of x-1 cheating husbands. Each woman not being cheated on knows of x cheaters. So when the women being cheated on don’t hear of the deaths on day x-1 they will know their husband is one of the cheaters and kill them the next day (day x)
Let’s hope there actually is at least one cheater, otherwise no wives have heared of any cheaters and the day after the anonymous note is sent they will all kill their husbands.
This was a really good riddle.
Although I don’t agree that the logic of the riddle allows Brent’s 99 scenario (technically she would wait and on the 99th day all other husbands would be dead) he does have the right answer and posted it before me. Good job Brent (presuming we’re right)
Brent, you are today’s winner!
All of the men (x) who are cheating will be killed and it will take one less than the number of cheating men nights (x-1) for their wives to discover this. If one man was cheating, and that woman hadn’t have heard of any other infidelity she would know it was her husband that was cheating. If there was two men cheating, both of their wives would think that since they have only heard of one man cheating he should die the next morning. If he doesn’t die, she knows her husband must also be cheating and that’s why the other husband didn’t die. Following this logic, you can know that all of the men will die after one less night than there is cheating men.
#50 24 hours
;i have no idea
:)