Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Movie Mathematics

At the beginning of the famous film Once Upon a Time in the West the character Harmonica is facing a small group of bandits.

Harmonica says, "Did you bring a horse for me?" The main bandit turns around, counts the horses, turns back and, with a smirk, replies, "Looks like we're shy one horse."

All the gunmen find this remark amusing. Alas, their smiles freeze when Harmonica shakes his head and says, "You brought two too many."

Question: How many bandits is Harmonica facing?

4 comments:

rgrig said...

Probably four, although I have no idea what "shying a horse" means.

mikolas said...

More correct would be "shy of one horse" [[(shy of) informal less than; short of : he won the championship with a score three points shy of a world record.]]. But he's a bandit.

However, the answer is not correct.

rgrig said...

Oh! Then it must be an integer number.

Anonymous said...

Depends how many bandits he decides to shoot...