DanielLC comments on Open Thread for February 11 - 17 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (325)
I wrote a logic puzzle, which you may have seen on my blog. It has gotten a lot of praise, and I think it is a really interesting puzzle.
Imagine the following two player game. Alice secretly fills 3 rooms with apples. She has an infinite supply of apples and infinitely large rooms, so each room can have any non-negative integer number of apples. She must put a different number of apples in each room. Bob will then open the doors to the rooms in any order he chooses. After opening each door and counting the apples, but before he opens the next door, Bob must accept or reject that room. Bob must accept exactly two rooms and reject exactly one room. Bob loves apples, but hates regret. Bob wins the game if the total number of apples in the two rooms he accepts is a large as possible. Equivalently, Bob wins if the single room he rejects has the fewest apples. Alice wins if Bob loses.
Which of the two players has the advantage in this game?
This puzzle is a lot more interesting than it looks at first, and the solution can be seen here.
I would also like to see some of your favorite logic puzzles. If you you have any puzzles that you really like, please comment and share.
To make sure I understand this correctly: Bob cares about winning, and getting no apples is as good as 3^^^3 apples, so long as he rejects the room with the fewest, right?
That is correct.