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I can't decide if you're trolling, or genuinely don't understand. This is becoming like explaining a joke, and turning into and endless sequence of refinements

I can't decide if you're trolling, or genuinely don't understand. This is becoming like explaining a joke, and turning into and endless sequence of refinements. I'll answer you once more. If you don't get it after that, I don't really care. > The word 'close' does not appear in the problem > formulation at all No, but "open" does. The implication is that the boxes each contain a piece of paper on which exactly one name is written, and that each box is closed. > the 'answer' I proposed is: prisoner #1 opens 50 boxes, > prisoner 2 opens the other 50, and then each prisoner > trivially searches for his name. You are assuming that the boxes can be left open. That is ruled out when the puzzle says: > and they will not know anything about the previous > prisoners' experiences ahead of time. If the boxes remain open then, specifically, the second prisoner will know the names that have been seen by the first prisoner. That's not allowed. > Nitpicking the text further: what is that ahead of > time doing there? What time? The time that they enter the room. > What can they learn afterwards? If, for example, their strategy is that everyone opens the first box (which is pretty pointless, but this is just an example) then easch one will learn something about what the others knew. In this way they know things that the prisoners before them knew. There are puzzles where this is significant. I'm not going to tell you if this is one of them. I feel that your objections to the wording are very like the programmer who insists on more and more refinements to a specification, and eventually just transliterates the spec into code. Anything that can't be trivially transliterated is queried, until finally the specification is isomorphic to the code. My apologies if I'm doing you a disservice, but I find it very difficult to find a position from which your questions become reasonable, and I offer answers and explanations in an attempt to learn more. Currently I'm failing, and perhaps it's time to give up.

Someone 16y ago
No, I am not trolling. My initial remark (very early in this thread) was just that the formulation wasn't clear to me. I thought that might trigger a rewording that would help later readers. After that, I just answered questions about why I found (past tense!) it not clear. I also think I made clear that I do understand the problem: *Apparently, we must deduce that all boxes get closed between visits from "they will not know anything about the previous prisoners' experiences ahead of time". I am OK with that,* but I guess I should have been even clearer. It may seem nitpicking, but to solve this, I need two things: - an understanding of what the problem is. - a solution to the problem. I find it natural that, getting stuck at step 2, to revisit step 1, looking for something I missed on reading it first (Quoting Polya: 'What is the unknown? What are the data? What is the condition?'). When I did that, I started to wonder what the description tried to say. Since the trivial answer that I gave in my initial reply, I did get that, but it didn't exactly jump out to me. Thanks for the polite replies, but let's close this discussion. It is helping neither of us. [Dmn: initially, I thought "of course the probability is way better than (1/2)^100'. There are only 100! permutations to choose between", but rereading the problem once more I begin to wonder whether 'in which he randomly distributes 100 pieces of paper'* actually implies that each box receives one piece of paper. Please don't reply, or I may feel obliged to apologize again.]

Someone 16y ago

No, I am not trolling. My initial remark (very early in this thread) was just that the formulation wasn't clear to me. I thought that might trigger a rewording that would help later readers. After that, I just answered questions about why I found (past tense!) it not clear. I also think I made clear that I do understand the problem: *Apparently, we must deduce that all boxes get closed between visits from "they will not know anything about the previous prisoners' experiences ahead of time". I am OK with that,* but I guess I should have been even clearer. It may seem nitpicking, but to solve this, I need two things: - an understanding of what the problem is. - a solution to the problem. I find it natural that, getting stuck at step 2, to revisit step 1, looking for something I missed on reading it first (Quoting Polya: 'What is the unknown? What are the data? What is the condition?'). When I did that, I started to wonder what the description tried to say. Since the trivial answer that I gave in my initial reply, I did get that, but it didn't exactly jump out to me. Thanks for the polite replies, but let's close this discussion. It is helping neither of us. [Dmn: initially, I thought "of course the probability is way better than (1/2)^100'. There are only 100! permutations to choose between", but rereading the problem once more I begin to wonder whether 'in which he randomly distributes 100 pieces of paper'* actually implies that each box receives one piece of paper. Please don't reply, or I may feel obliged to apologize again.]