Scott Duke Kominers, Columnist

Kominers’s Conundrums: The Warden Has a Brainteaser

Some puzzles require deep dives. Are you ready?

April 25, 2020 at 12:00 PM UTC

Scott Duke Kominers is the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate of the Harvard University department of economics.

A logical leap or two could change the whole game.
Photographer: E+/Getty Images

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Some puzzles are solvable in a blink. Others require deeper dives. The tale of the prisoners and the light switch is a classic brainteaser that takes several steps to unravel. Are you ready?

The word “guarantees” is important in this puzzle: It means that the full solution is not just a strategy the prisoners should use, but also a logical argument (a “proof”) convincing us that the strategy will work for every sequence of room entries that might arise.