I'm a bit sleepy, but I can't get this to work. For 3 prisoners, what if the seq... | Hacker News

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		michael_h on Feb 23, 2014 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Prison Switcharoo I'm a bit sleepy, but I can't get this to work. For 3 prisoners, what if the sequence is (P1 T P1 T P1 T P1 T P2 P2 P2 P2)? Where T is the tally keeper. They've all gone the same number of times (given enough time), but the tally keeper would declare that they had all flipped a switch before P2 had gone in at all. Thus, alligators. Did I miss something?

daeken on Feb 23, 2014 | [–]

Each person will only toggle A to the 'on' state twice.

michael_h on Feb 24, 2014 | | [–]

ah, yes. It even says it right there in the article. Thanks!

TobbenTM on Feb 23, 2014 | [–]

The prisoners will only turn on switch A twice. After that they will leave it, and rather toggle the B switch.

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