Life is A Test 2: Test Harder (Quite A Bit Harder)

by Brony_of_Brody

The Answer 8

You have a 50% chance of crossing to the shore.

There are many ways to tackle this problem, but infuriatingly, there's a very simple explanation that barely uses any fancy maths at all.

You want to cross to the other side in this puzzle via the mini-islands and bridges. But imagine that there's a pony in a boat, in the water, who wants to pass through the bridges and islands, but can't unless enough bridges are destroyed to clear a path. Both of you are staring down the exact same problem, except in reverse: you can only pass to the other side if the pony in the boat CAN'T pass to the other side. Since both of your problems are not only mutually exclusive, but also structurally identical, it is inevitable that only one of you is going to get what you want, and since both outcomes are equally likely, both of you must have a fifty percent chance, and that's true regardless of the number of islands and connecting bridges.