English

Cooking Poisons: Thinking Laterally with Game Theory

Combinatorics 2024-04-09 v1 Computer Science and Game Theory

Abstract

We revive an old lateral-thinking puzzle by Michael Rabin, involving poisons with strange properties. We show that the puzzle admits several unintended solutions that are just as interesting as the intended solution. Analyzing these alternative solutions using game theory yields surprisingly subtle results and several unanswered questions.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2404.05053,
  title  = {Cooking Poisons: Thinking Laterally with Game Theory},
  author = {Timothy Y. Chow},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.05053},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

7 pages, to be published in Mathematics Magazine

R2 v1 2026-06-28T15:46:45.037Z