Every week on Monday, a ‘Puzzle of the week’ will be published on the Estimator website. The answers will be published a week later.
The Estimator Committee has a rather tight budget (at least we think so ourselves) and therefore Mitch has been trying to get some more money from the treasurer (Jeroen). Because they are friends, Jeroen decides to give Mitch a chance to double the budget. They make the following agreement: Jeroen picks a number, which can be either 1, 2 or 3. Then Mitch is allowed to ask one “Yes/No” question, which Jeroen will answer truthfully with “Yes”, “No” or “I don’t know”. Helped by Jeroen’s answer, Mitch must now guess which number Jeroen chose. If he is correct, the budget will be doubled. However, if the answer is incorrect, the budget will be halved and the Estimator Committee will have to write a very lauding article about Jeroen. Jeroen thinks he outsmarted Mitch, because he thinks Mitch will probably not know the correct number for sure after one question. Which question should Mitch ask to be sure the budget will be doubled?
