He starts with the last prisoner. Their strategy would change if they knew for sure what the ratio of colors were to be. ie: How many of each color are to be issued.

Assuming a 50/50 split of green/red, then they have a cumulative survival rate of 75% overall (5 with a 100% guarantee of freedom and 5 with a 50/50 chance).

That is, if they start with the last person in line and he states the color of the hat on the head in front of him and so forth.

However, those percentages actually increase if there are fewer of either color in the mix as the true "guessers" will have increasingly more information as the line progresses.

I guess.

The only thing they can say is 'red' or 'green'. It starts with the last guy in line - the one who can see everyone's hat but himself - and moves forward. The hats can be any distribution of red and green.

Lol, just on the night train back home and next to me there's two teenage lads. Opposite them there's this cute ish girl, bit slutty looking. The lads are fiddling on their mobile phone when the girl suddenly says "ok lads no more photos now please". Seems like their sneaky attempts to get some covert pics of her tits were unsuccessful!

Also, voice inflection would change things dramatically.

If they simply state what the last guy said, they will survive. If they answer in the form of a question, then the guy in front of him knows it's the opposite.

Dude says blue, next guy knows his hat is blue, but the guy in front of him is red, so he goes... Blue? the signal to the guy in front that his hat is red.

The dude that goes first is the only one that has any chance of being shot in this scenario. I guess.

Yeah, I used to sandbag at bowling, really just for tournaments though. That's what that post was about. I feel bad about doing that stuff now, but I was dirt poor, so that mitigates it a fair amount.

sounds like something someone who was actually good at pool would say... OK fine, you got me, I'll gamble you in pool.

nvm that was for 5 and 5

The first guy has no better than 50/50 chance no matter what. So he might as well help the team by stating the color belonging to the majority of hats (out of 9) he can see. This will give useful information to the others.

The last guy to act should be able to deduce his color with 100% certainty based on hearing answers and hearing who got shot and who didnt.

Im not sure how to calculate the % certainty the middle 8 guys have without knowing the hat distribution breakdown except that it gets higher obv as they go along.

As stated, it can be all green, all red, or anywhere in between?

Yes

Micro that's a complicated way of saying

Nice Suzz. A riddle I got recently:

A king is throwing a party and has 100 bottles of wine he intends to serve to his guests. the night before the party he learns 1 of the bottles is poisoned. He decides the only way to figure out which bottle contains the poison (it's like iocane powder you cannot taste it or smell it) is to test it on his servants. The poison takes about a half a day to a full day to cause death. What is the fewest number of servants a benevolent king would need to kill to determine precisely which bottle of wine is poisoned before his party.

Assume each servant may drink from as many bottles as you like and each bottle may be drunk as many times as you like (the poison need only touch your lips to cause death).

No.

Hint its much less than 50

Yeah I figured, still ciphering

Head hurt

Ah yeah micro that is a good solution. I guess the way it was given to me is more like "What is the fewest testers we need" your approach should yield the solution I had in mind with some tinkering.

f wine drink whiskey

On Suzzers' riddle.
If the first guy shouts the color he sees in front of him he has 50%, but the 2nd guy knows. For the remainder they can then agree that if the person shouts a short "red" or "green" the following person has the same color, while if the color is different the shout "reeeed" or "greeeen".

I must be using f'ing invisible e-ink. Yeesh.

Well sorry, just skimmed thread on my phone and responded quite quickly after I saw the riddle.

Cannot read spoiler content on 2+2 app.

If you want to read a spoiler just quote the post and you can see the text. Sadly it won't let you see pics.

I think the answer to the wine riddle is 7.