50. How Many Wiser
Blind Sorcerer's Buff
Wizards?
How many of the twenty-eight apprentices are likely
to match the previous toss and acquire the new power
Merlin promised?
Merlin passes around an urn of new black and white
magic seeds to the budding wizards and witches for
them to sample. The magician who developed them
claims that the black seed makes one impervious to
dragon fire and that the white seed provides the cloak
of invisibility.
The urn dispenses one seed to each apprentice sor-
cerer. By the time it reaches Titania and Garth of Glend
there are only two black seeds and one white seed left.
What is the probability of both getting a black seed?
Clues on page 92.
Answers on page 125.
52.
Merlin singles out four of the apprentice sorcerers
and asks each one to stand at a corner of the huge
ballroom in the castle. He blindfolds them and steers
them to the middle of the room. Then he turns each
around several times and tells them to return to their
original corners.
If each one winds up in a corner, what is the proba-
bility that all four will succeed in getting back to the
right one?
53. Encore
To vary the challenge, Merlin blindfolds another four
apprentices and sets them in the four corners of the
ballroom. Then he steers them, blindfolded, to the mid-
dle of the room, directing them to return to their origi-
nal corners one at a time. Once a corner is occupied, it
is off bounds.
If each one reaches a corner, what are the odds that
these four apprentices will return to their original
corners?
Clues on page 92.
Answers on page 125.