Puzzle: Are You Smarter Than 6,832 Other New York Times Readers?

While I correctly analysed the situation fully before calling it, I expected most of NYT&#x27;s readers to use zero-step thinking. It turns out that they do one better, so I guess I&#x27;m the typical NYT reader, in a sense.<p>General comment: As different things get &quot;strongly&quot; coupled to each other, one needs to take more and more steps into account to get a reasonable answer.<p>The question I have is this: Is there any way to figure out how many steps the other people in the situation will be using?

&gt; Your guess, while not a winner, was better than those of 95 percent of all readers. Take a bow.<p>So the answer to this headline, finally, is &quot;yes.&quot; Eat it, Betteridge.

I played to quickly. As of 27,000 my answer of 16 was three to high. I am guessing it will be the right answer in around 5 minutes

I was too optimistic. 16 when the answer was 19 (43,884 answers so far). This is more a test how much faith you have in the general intelligence in our society. People who played it to the end game nash equilibrium must think that they are surrounded by geniuses.

I figured most people will think people are picking 42 (meaning of life and all) so they would pick 28. So to get ahead of them I picked 19. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;Ke1m0jp.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;Ke1m0jp.png</a>

Wonder how much anchoring effect there is (sample numbers are given in the original question). I note the sample numbers are generated by javascript -- are they testing the impact of those numbers?<p>Also, I don&#x27;t see why N-step arguments are invalid; everyone who went for the Nash Equilibrium is wrong (the average is not 3&#x2F;2 * 0); you just need to predict how many step-thinkers people are :P<p>(I guessed 6, which is approx 2&#x2F;3 of 2&#x2F;3 of the winning answer... so presumably I&#x27;m two steps too deep :P)

&gt; <i>Many people believe that it’s better to sell a house in the spring, for example, because more buyers are looking then. But what really matters is the ratio between buyers and sellers. You’d rather sell your house when your town has 20 buyers and only 2 sellers than when it has 100 buyers and 500 sellers.</i><p>That&#x27;s a great observation, and I wonder if anyone has done a serious study on the optimal season to sell a house.

Look at all those people who voted 67 or higher...

is zero really the nash equlibrium? given that they seem to round decimal numbers it seems like it should be one instead.

I was one off at the time I played. Is there any actual prize for winning?

I got the Nash consolation prize