Puzzle challenge: Can you guess colour of Chandu’s hat?

New Delhi: We are surrounded by amusing puzzles and situations that might trick our brains and test us. Solving puzzles and brain teasers help to sharpen the brain and handle such tricky situations logically. If you like solving puzzles and spending time brainstorming here is a nice situational puzzle for you.

We are taught about probability in school and are asked to solve word problems with different coloured balls and hats. Here is a similar puzzle, but it uses logical reasoning rather than probability. Read the situation carefully and try to answer the given question.

Situation:

There are three red hats and two white hats. Anant, Balwant and Chandu are three friends wearing hats and the two unused ones are hidden. They do not know the colour of their own hats, but they can see the colour of the hat worn by the other two. Anant was asked a question, “Do you know the colour of your hat? He answered.” No, I don’t know.” When the same question was asked to Balwant, he said, “I don’t know either.”

Here is a catch, both Anant and Balwant are wearing red hats. At last, the question was asked to Chandu after he listened to the previous two answers carefully. He was confident about the answer and said, “Yes, I know the colour of my hat.”

What do you need to answer?

Try to answer the colour of the hat Chandu is wearing.

Answer:

Chandu is wearing a red hat.

Explanation:

Assume that his hat was white. Anant sees the white hat and if he sees a white hat on Balwant’s head, he will know that his hat is red and he will answer ‘yes’. But because he answered ‘no’, this tells Balwant that his hat is red, which means he will answer ‘yes’. But he also answered ‘no’, thus, the assumption was wrong and the colour of Chandu’s hat is red.