India, Sept. 21 -- One of my most satisfying original puzzles involves Gabbar Singh's revolver, and regular readers might remember it from 2023 when I ran it to mark the 50th episode of Problematics. We established that the bandit from Sholay is a fine probability theorist. He is, however, not the only one from cinema.

A much more harrowing scene with a partly loaded revolver features in the Oscar-winning 1978 film The Deer Hunter. Unlike Gabbar's unfortunate victims, the characters in The Deer Hunter willingly take a chance with death. They play Russian roulette, with one out of the revolver's six chambers loaded with a bullet, and players alternately place the weapon on their own temple and pull the trigger. Viewers will never forget t...