Five prisoners are going to take beans from a bag with 100 beans. They will do it one prisoner at a time, and only once each. No communication is allowed between them, but they can count the beans left in the bag. All prisoners who end with the largest and the smallest number of beans will die.

Who is most likely to survive?

Assume:
1. they are all smart people.
2. they will try to survive first and then try to kill more people.
3. they do not need to take out all the 100 beans.

they all survive

if they all take one bean each then in the end they are all equal.  By taking only one bean, assuming all must take at least one, it is a given to the next prisoner to what each before has taken. 

Posted by Dean on 2005-12-06 06:38:15