I was faced with a similar competition at Toorcon. I thought of three possible avenues:
1) Determine volume of the jar, calculate the number of potential pieces of candy corn in the jar. The downside is I expected everyone else to use the same method.
2) Find the same type jar and fill it with candy corn, and then count the number of pieces.
3) Execute option 2....and then swap it their jar, causing me to know the number of pieces in both the original and the replaced jar.
Rationality is powerful...rationality + being devious (or thinking orthogonally) is even better.
P.S—Toorcon is a hacker con, so such behavior is considered acceptable O:-)
I was faced with a similar competition at Toorcon. I thought of three possible avenues:
1) Determine volume of the jar, calculate the number of potential pieces of candy corn in the jar. The downside is I expected everyone else to use the same method.
2) Find the same type jar and fill it with candy corn, and then count the number of pieces.
3) Execute option 2....and then swap it their jar, causing me to know the number of pieces in both the original and the replaced jar.
Rationality is powerful...rationality + being devious (or thinking orthogonally) is even better. P.S—Toorcon is a hacker con, so such behavior is considered acceptable O:-)
Edit: Option 3 was the one I executed :)