100 prisoners and a lightbulb – looking back

07/06/2022

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by   Vladan Majerech, et al.

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100 prisoners and a light bulb is a long standing mathematical puzzle. The problem was studied mostly in 2002 [5], 2003 [1], and 2004 [3]. Solutions in published articles had average number of visits above 3850, but best solutions on forums had (declared) average number of visits around 3500. I spent some time in 2007-2009 to optimize the communication strategy and I pushed the average number of visits below 3390, seems no new ideas appear after it. Recently I have met several people familiar with published papers from 2002-2003 but not knowing newer results. Even after 2009 several papers on the topic were published where the new results were not mentioned [4]. Whole book was written about the problem [2]. This is why I am writing this summary.