That's exactly what I mean. We don't know enough about magic to say what Harry or Voldemort's capabilities are -- the whole thing is a black box. It's not a satisfying answer to the puzzle (for me) and not much of a testimony to "rationality" as a way of thinking at all -- as presented this is about knowing genre conventions, not about superior or inferior thinking. All of the AI Box solutions I saw were much more pro-"rationality" by my lights.
I really can't believe "use magic" was the right answer. In addition to being unsolvable from the perspective of the audience -- we don't know anything about magic! -- it's also totally out of step of the rest of the work. I'd love to see a rewrite fork from the "AI Box" line of solutions.
In the meantime I really hope they're still in the mirror.
I wrote a version of this up at reddit too, but it seems to me trying to hack the laws of physics is wasted effort when we know very little about how magic works in concrete terms. We don't know what Harry can really do, how fast he can do it, or whether Voldemort would notice.
What we do know are: how Harry thinks how Eliezer thinks * what Voldemort wants
So we should be looking at things Harry could say that would advance his goal of surviving rather than trying to come up with a combination of spells, with the understanding that winning ideas are proba...
I'm a fan, but if I were EY I would be worried about getting the nomination and then coming in under No Award. That seems a more likely outcome than somehow winning Best Novel.