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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Shizuma, Souji
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.09154
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author Shizuma, Souji
author_facet Shizuma, Souji
contents The prisoners and hats puzzle, or simply the hat puzzle, is a family of games in which a group of prisoners are each assigned a colored hat and are asked to guess the color of their own hat. Various versions of the puzzle arise depending on the number of prisoners, the number of possible hat colors, and the information available to them before and after the game begins. These puzzles are broadly classified according to whether the prisoners' declarations are made simultaneously or non-simultaneously. In this paper we present a general theorem concerning the existence of a winning strategy when the declarations are non-simultaneous. We also discuss the relationship between the construction of such strategies and the Axiom of Choice, as well as their connection to the simultaneous-declaration case.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_09154
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A General Theorem for Non-Simultaneous Hat Guessing Puzzles
Shizuma, Souji
Logic
The prisoners and hats puzzle, or simply the hat puzzle, is a family of games in which a group of prisoners are each assigned a colored hat and are asked to guess the color of their own hat. Various versions of the puzzle arise depending on the number of prisoners, the number of possible hat colors, and the information available to them before and after the game begins. These puzzles are broadly classified according to whether the prisoners' declarations are made simultaneously or non-simultaneously. In this paper we present a general theorem concerning the existence of a winning strategy when the declarations are non-simultaneous. We also discuss the relationship between the construction of such strategies and the Axiom of Choice, as well as their connection to the simultaneous-declaration case.
title A General Theorem for Non-Simultaneous Hat Guessing Puzzles
topic Logic
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.09154