life or death

You are a prisoner sentenced to death. The Emperor offers you a chance to live by playing a simple game. He gives you 50 black marbles, 50 white marbles, and 2 empty bowls. He then says, 'Divide these 100 marbles into these 2 bowls. You can divide them any way you like as long as you use all the marbles. Then I will blindfold you and mix the bowls around. You then can choose one bowl and remove ONE marble. If the marble is WHITE you will live, but if the marble is BLACK... you will die.'

How do you divide the marbles up so that you have the greatest probability of choosing a WHITE marble?




Similar Riddles

One day Jenifer meets the Lion and the Tiger in the Forest of Forgetfulness. She knows that the Lion lies on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, and tells the truth on the other days of the week. The Tiger, on the other hand, lies on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, but tells the truth on the other days of the week. Now they make the following statements to Jenifer:

Lion: Yesterday was one of my lying days.

Tiger: Yesterday was one of my lying days too.

What day is it?

Asked by Neha on 07 Jan 2021


You are given 2 eggs.
You have access to a 100-storey building.
Eggs can be very hard or very fragile means it may break if dropped from the first floor or may not even break if dropped from 100th floor, Both eggs are identical.
You need to figure out the highest floor of a 100-storey building an egg can be dropped without breaking.
Now the question is how many drops you need to make. You are allowed to break 2 eggs in the process

Asked by Neha on 12 Dec 2025

During an experiment, a guy throws a bouncy ball from a 100 feet tall building. The ball has a specific characteristic. Every time it hits the ground, it bounces up halfway.

How many bounces do you think the ball will make before it comes to a stop ?

Asked by Neha on 24 Nov 2023


Andrew’s doctor gives him three pills and tells him to take one every half hour. How much time will have passed by the time Andrew’s taken all three pills?

Asked by Neha on 22 Jun 2025

John is on an island and there are three crates of fruit that have washed up in front of him. One crate contains only apples. One crate contains only oranges. The other crate contains both apples and oranges.

Each crate is labelled. One reads 'apples', one reads 'oranges', and one reads 'apples and oranges'. He know that NONE of the crates have been labeled correctly - they are all wrong.

If he can only take out and look at just one of the pieces of fruit from just one of the crates, how can he label all of the crates correctly?

Asked by Neha on 07 Jan 2024

They came out at night, without being called.
They lost at day, without being stolen.
Who are they?

Asked by Neha on 30 Aug 2021


A certain street contains 100 buildings. They are numbered from 1 to 100. How many 9's are used in these numbers?

Asked by Neha on 29 Mar 2024

Find The Next Number in the series:

12 13 15 17 111 113 117 119 123 ?

Asked by Neha on 01 Dec 2023

Can you circle exactly four of these numbers such that the total is twelve?

1 6 1
6 1 6
1 6 1
6 1 6

Asked by Neha on 27 Apr 2023


Buy me, smell me or deliver me, I do not change.

Who am I?

Asked by Neha on 19 Feb 2024

Hot Articles

Amazing Facts

Challenging

There is a cryptic organization called Cicada 3301 that posts challenging puzzles online, possibly to recruit codebreakers and linguists.