A certain king wishes to test his three wise men. He arranges them in a circle so that they can see and hear each other and tells them that he will put a white or black spot on each of their foreheads but that at least one spot will be white. In fact all three spots are white. He then repeatedly asks them, ``Do you know the color of your spot?'' What do they answer?
The solution is that they answer, ``No,'' the first two times the question is asked and answer ``Yes'' thereafter.
This is a variant form of the puzzle which avoids having wise men reason about how fast their colleagues reason.
Here is the Mr. S and Mr. P puzzle:
Two numbers m and n are chosen such that . Mr. S is told their sum and Mr. P is told their product. The following dialogue ensues:
Mr. P: I don't know the numbers.
Mr. S: I knew you didn't know. I don't know either.
Mr. P: Now I know the numbers.
Mr S: Now I know them too.
In view of the above dialogue, what are the numbers?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .