Mr. Blue has 12 brown gloves and 8 black gloves in a drawer in his closet. If he blindly pulls gloves from the drawer, what's the minimum number of gloves Mr. Blue will have to pick, to be certain he has a pair of gloves of the same color?

For this kind of problems you must figure out the worst case. Here, getting nothing but left hand gloves is the answer: you could first get the 10 "lefts" before you get your first "right", so the answer is 11.

Posted by e.g. on 2004-10-06 13:56:31