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Puzzle | Find the last ball to remain after the entire process

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Problem Statement: You have 20 Red and 16 Blue balls in a bag. You pull out 2 balls one after another. If the balls are of the same color, then you replace them with a Blue ball – but if they are of different color, you replace them with a Red ball. Once you take out the balls, you do not put them back in the bag – so the balls keep reducing. What would be the color of the last ball remaining in the bag?

Answer: Blue Balls

Observations:

There are basically 3 Cases:
1.When colors of both the picked balls are Red: Here, overall red balls are reduced by 2 and blue balls are increased by 1.
2.When colors of both the picked balls are Blue: Here, overall blue balls are decreased by 1 because one blue ball was replaced.
3.When colors of both the picked balls are different: Here also, overall blue balls are decreased by 1(Red ball doesn’t decrease even after picking because one red ball was replaced in this case).
Red Balls can only be reduced by two and that is in the 1st condition, i.e., if you choose both red balls, then they are replaced by a single blue ball, in no other way you can reduce red balls. 
Blue Balls can be reduced by one in the  2nd  and 3rd condition if you choose both balls as blue and if both balls are of different color.

Now, since red balls are always reduced by two. So, at any point during the replacement process the count of red balls is always even, i.e. you will end up with either 0 or 2 or 4…(even number) red balls in the bag. There will never be a situation in which the bag contains an odd number of red balls. As a result, the last ball in the bag will be a blue ball in any combination of replacements.


Last Updated : 12 Dec, 2023
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