Knights, spies, games and ballot sequences

DOI10.1016/J.DISC.2010.07.005MaRDI QIDQ710599zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Mark Wildon

Publication date 19 October 2010

Published in Discrete Mathematics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0903.2869

zbMATH Keywords

ballot sequence knights spies two-player game

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Graph labelling (graceful graphs, bandwidth, etc.) (05C78) 2-person games (91A05) Applications of game theory (91A80)

Abstract: This paper presents a solution to the Knights and Spies Problem: In a room there are n people, each labelled with a unique number between 1 and n. A person may either be a knight or a spy. Knights always tell the truth, while spies may either lie or tell the truth, as they see fit. Each person in the room knows the identity of everyone else. Apart from this, all that is known is that strictly more knights than spies are present. Asking only questions of the form: `Person i, what is the identity of person j?', what is the least number of questions that will guarantee to find the true identities of all n people? The analysis of a related two-player game is critical to the proof. Some probabilistic aspects are also explored. The paper ends by presenting three open questions concerned with generalisations of the problem.

Review text

A solution to the Knights and Spies Problem is presented. In a room there are \(n\) people, each labeled with a unique number between 1 and \(n\). A person may either be a knight or a spy. Knights always tell the truth, while spies may lie or tell the truth as they see fit. Each person in the room knows the identity of everyone else. Apart from this, all that is known is that strictly more knights than spies are present. Asking only questions of the form ``person \(i\), what is the identity of person \(j\)?, what is the least number of questions that will guarantee to find the true identities of all \(n\) people? A questioning strategy is presented that uses slightly less than \(3n/2\) questions, and it is shown that it is optimal by solving a related two-player game. The performance of this strategy is analysed using methods from the famous ballot-counting problem.

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