4 ms·

You just told the other contestant the strategy, making it an us. He has no need to know in advance since you just informed him.

• aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
  >He has no need to know in advance since you just informed him. But the other party could have informed you their strategy too. So you tell them "Let's use strategy X", and the same step you receive "Let's use strategy Y" from them. Looks like the first meta-task is to agree on a strategy :^)
  • brandonmenc 5y ago
    An intermediate step could be to send the two strategies back and forth at random until you both agree on the same one. The arbitrary message "constraint" seems to be an escape hatch.
    • aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
      And how would you agree on this intermediate step? The other party could offer a similar but different variant of this intermediate step (e.g. use the strategy whose description comes first alphanumerically). You have no way to force the other party to use your random strategy for the intermediate step.
      • kybernetikos 5y ago
        Great point - it's not quite as trivial as it appears. But I think you could just use the same approach: "Every turn, keep suggesting a strategy until you receive the same strategy you suggest". Once that happens, then you both execute that strategy. Both players are trying to collaborate here, so they'll naturally subordinate themselves on the first opportunity to win the game, they'll implement randomness or backoff naturally.