Hey everyone! This is just a placeholder chapter for the above notes. Since a chapter must be a minimum of 500 words, enjoy the following jokes.
What's a gargoyle's favorite movie?
Fiddler on the roof.
Why did the gargoyle get cast as the lead in the movie?
He had a chiseled physique.
Why didn't the gargoyle laugh at these jokes?
Because he was stone-faced.
And now, a riddle:
One hundred gnomes go for a walk in the woods, when they happen to stumble upon...an evil witch! The evil witch immediately kidnaps all the gnomes and presents them with a terrifying situation. She will line the 100 gnomes up in a single line, such that each gnome can see all of the gnomes in front of them, but none of the gnomes behind (so gnome at the front can see 0 gnomes, while gnome at the rear can see 99 gnomes). Then, she places a hat on the head of each gnome: red or blue (there are 100 hats total, but not necessarily 50 of each color). Then, starting at the back of the line and moving to the front so that all gnomes can hear, she will ask each gnome a single question: what color is their hat? If they answer correctly, they live. If they answer wrong, they die. And if they say anything other than 'red' or 'blue' (or any special 'inflections' on the words), she will immediately kill all 100 gnomes.
Stolen novel; please report.
But the witch is not entirely without mercy. She will allow the gnomes to talk beforehand, to come up with a strategy for how they might answer. And the gnomes are smart -- they come up with a strategy that guarantees 99 gnomes will live, while the 100th will have a 50/50 chance of survival. What is that strategy?
The gnome at the rear can see 99 hats: either an odd number of red and an even number of blue, or vice versa. He agrees to say the color of whichever hat has an even number. He has a 50/50 shot at living. So if there are 75 red and 24 blue, he will say blue.
Then, the gnome in front of him counts the hats he can see. if both colors have an even number, he will say the opposite of what the previous gnome said (so if he sees 74 red and 24 blue, he knows he's wearing red). And this continues all the way down the line, with each gnome keeping track of what the gnomes behind them said, allowing them to deduce what color they are wearing based on what color the first gnome originally guessed.