Life is a Test: A Series of Pony Logic Puzzles

by Brony_of_Brody

The Answer 34

In order to escape, you need to introduce some sort of means of keeping track of prisoners, and that means having to assign outcomes to tasks. The easiest way to do this is to nominate one pony, a 'leader' who will act separately from the other twenty-two prisoners, while the rest take the same actions.

The group agrees upon the following rules:

The leader is the only person who will announce that everypony has visited the switch room. All prisoners (except for the leader) will flip the first switch up during their first visit to the room, and again on the second visit. They are only to flip the second switch if the first switch is already up, or this is their third or more visit to the room. Stress that ONLY the leader may flip the first switch DOWN: if the first switch is already down, then the leader will flip the second switch.

By making sure that the leader is the only one to take the unique action of flipping the second switch down, it becomes a means of tracking how many people have visited the room, by remembering how often the leader has had to move the second switch down. Once the leader has flipped the first switch down forty-four times, they announce that all have visited the room.

It does not matter how many times a prisoner has visited the room, in which order the prisoners were sent or even if the first switch was initially up. Once the leader has flipped the switch down forty-four times then the leader knows everyone has visited the room. If the switch was initially down, then all twenty-two prisoners will flip the switch up twice. If the switch was initially up, then there will be one prisoner who only flips the switch up once and the rest will flip it up twice.

Why forty-four? Because the prisoners can not be certain that all have visited the room after the leader flips the switch down 23 times: it could be that the first twelve prisoners plus the leader were taken to the room twenty-four times before anyone else is allowed into the room. Because the initial state of the switch might be up, the prisoners must flip the first switch up twice. If they decide to flip it up only once, the leader will not know if he should count to twenty-two or twenty-three.

Comments

[Skittlebug]

Yes! I did get it! I was right! Ha ha ha!

[Brony_of_Brody]

9252968
No.