Prisoner to be freed

The warden meets with 23 new prisoners when they arrive. He tells them, "You may meet today and plan a strategy. But after today, you will be in isolated cells and will have no communication with one another.

"In the prison is a switch room, which contains two light switches labeled 1 and 2, each of which can be in either up or the down position. I am not telling you their present positions. The switches are not connected to anything.

"After today, from time to time whenever I feel so inclined, I will select one prisoner at random and escort him to the switch room. This prisoner will select one of the two switches and reverse its position. He must flip one switch when he visits the switch room, and may only flip one of the switches. Then he'll be led back to his cell.

"No one else will be allowed to alter the switches until I lead the next prisoner into the switch room. I'm going to choose prisoners at random. I may choose the same guy three times in a row, or I may jump around and come back. I will not touch the switches, if I wanted you dead you would already be dead.

"Given enough time, everyone will eventually visit the switch room the same number of times as everyone else. At any time, anyone may declare to me, 'We have all visited the switch room.'

"If it is true, then you will all be set free. If it is false, and somebody has not yet visited the switch room, you will all die horribly. You will be carefully monitored, and any attempt to break any of these rules will result in instant death to all of you"

What is the strategy they come up with so that they can be free?




Similar Riddles

A murder has been committed in a house. You are a detective and have to find out the murderer.

You investigate by asking three questions to each of the six suspects. Out of those six suspects, four are liars. It is not necessary that they speak everything a lie. But in their answers, there must be at least one lie. One of the six is the murderer.

There are eight rooms in the house in which the murder has been committed: Kitchen, Living Room, Bathroom, Garage, Basement, 3 Bedrooms.

At the time of the murder, only the murderer was present in the killing room. Any number of people can be present in any of the other rooms at the same time.

Can you identify the murderer and the four liars? Also, can you find out who was in which room?

The responses of all the suspects are mentioned below.

Joseph:
Peter was in the 2nd bedroom.
So was I.
David was in the bathroom.

Mandy:
I agree with Joseph that David was in the bathroom and Peter was in the 2nd bedroom.
But I think that Joseph was in the living room, OH MY GOD!

Peter:
Mandy was in the kitchen with Christopher.
But I was in the bathroom.

David:
I still say Peter was in the 2nd bedroom and Jennifer was in the bathroom.
Joseph was in the 1st bedroom.

Jennifer:
Peter was in the bathroom with Christopher.
And Mandy was in the kitchen.

Christopher:
David was in the kitchen.
And I was in the 2nd bedroom with Peter.

PS: The corpse was found in the Living Room.

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A merchant was able to escape the kingdom without harming the shooter. How?

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I go up towards the beautiful sky and down toward the green ground.
I am present tense.
I am past tense too
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This is a famous paradox which has caused a great deal of argument and disbelief from many who cannot accept the correct answer. Four balls are placed in a hat. One is white, one is blue and the other two are red. The bag is shaken and someone draws two balls from the hat. He looks at the two balls and announces that at least one of them is red. What are the chances that the other ball he has drawn out is also red?

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Assume there are approximately 5,000,000,000 (5 billion) people on Earth. What would you estimate to be the result, if you multiply together the number of fingers on every person's left hand? (For the purposes of this exercise, thumbs count as fingers, for five fingers per hand.) If you cannot estimate the number then try to guess how long the number would be.

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Amazing Facts

Word ladder puzzle

The word ladder puzzle was invented by Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.