Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 5.5 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:

On Semi-Predictable Island, everyone is either a liar (who always lies), a truth-teller (who always tells the truth), or a spy (who could do either). Aerith encounters three people and knows that one is a liar, one a truth-teller, and one a spy. She can ask two yes-or-no questions, and all three of them will answer each question. Can she determine which person is which?

Solution

Solution:

First she asks the three people, "Are you a spy?" The truth-teller will say "no," the liar will say "yes," and the spy could say either. Either way, two people will give the same answer and the third will give a different answer. She can now tell the identity of that third person: if they said "yes" and the other two said "no," they must be the truth-teller, and if they said "no" and the other two said "yes," they must be the liar.

Now she picks one of the people she does not yet know the identity of (call this person AA), and asks the three people whether that person is a spy. The answer of the person whose identity she knows (call this person BB) will then tell her whether or not AA is a spy. If BB is a truth-teller, then AA is a spy if and only if BB says "yes," and if BB is a liar, then AA is a spy if and only if BB says "no." Either way, she now knows what BB is, and that tells her what the third person must be.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.