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Seven Puzzles You Think You Must Not Have Heard Correctly (2006) [pdf]

math.dartmouth.edu

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Re: Seven Puzzles You Think You Must Not Have Heard Correctly (2006) [pdf]

#3

For #1, I didn't hear correctly because I didn't understand that the clearly insane and cruel warden would let the prisoners label the boxes before hand :-/

You don't actually need to label them you just need all the prisoners to be able to memorize which name is associated with which box, Alice's box is the first on the left, Bob's the second etc... Then when Zach. Z. Z. Vanderwall opens "his box" and finds the name Bob he follows procedure.

You need a minimal perfect hash function but it's a thing that can be done, especially because prisoners in these sort of conundrums always have fantastic memories and mental math facility.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_hash_function#Minimal_...

Re: Seven Puzzles You Think You Must Not Have Heard Correctly (2006) [pdf]

#5

Thank god I could solve "Love in Kleptopia". Would have been embarrassing being a founder of a security company.

I'm mad at myself for not managing to figure this out myself.

I guess i made more assumptions about the limitations than there were in the description of the problem.

Re: Seven Puzzles You Think You Must Not Have Heard Correctly (2006) [pdf]

#6
post #3

For #1, I didn't hear correctly because I didn't understand that the clearly insane and cruel warden would let the prisoners label the boxes before hand :-/

You don't actually need to label them you just need all the prisoners to be able to memorize which name is associated with which box, Alice's box is the first on the left, Bob's the second etc... Then when Zach. Z. Z. Vanderwall opens "his box" and finds the name Bob he follows procedure. You need a minimal perfect hash function but it's a thing that can be done, especially because prisoners in these sort of conundru…

Still, I didn't hear correctly either: I thought there would be 100 identical boxes lined up in a row by the warden's assistant.

Re: Seven Puzzles You Think You Must Not Have Heard Correctly (2006) [pdf]

#9
post #3

For #1, I didn't hear correctly because I didn't understand that the clearly insane and cruel warden would let the prisoners label the boxes before hand :-/

You don't actually need to label them you just need all the prisoners to be able to memorize which name is associated with which box, Alice's box is the first on the left, Bob's the second etc... Then when Zach. Z. Z. Vanderwall opens "his box" and finds the name Bob he follows procedure. You need a minimal perfect hash function but it's a thing that can be done, especially because prisoners in these sort of conundru…

And they all do what you, The Nerd, say. Prisoners are known to be well-behaved and respect Nerds! /s
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