Scott Duke Kominers, Columnist

Kominers’s Conundrums: Splitting a Record Chocolate Bar

Can you break up this extraordinary treat without wasting a snap?

June 6, 2020 at 1:00 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.

Hand Arranging Chocolate Bars On White Background — Photographer: Gunther Kleinert/EyeEm via Getty Images

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Just before the lockdown, Chocolade atelier van Noppen set the world record for the biggest chocolate bar ever. It measured just over 26.8 x 14.3 meters, for a total of 383.24 square meters. You can watch them create it here.

That’s way too much chocolate for even Count Chocula,1but how would they go about dividing the bar in the most efficient way? That is the core question of this week’s puzzle, which is an old classic that economist Matthew Jackson recently reminded me of: