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Baron Munchhausen's Sequence (1003.3406v1)
Published 17 Mar 2010 in math.CO, cs.DM, cs.DS, and math.HO
Abstract: We investigate a coin-weighing puzzle that appeared in the all-Russian math Olympiad in 2000. We liked the puzzle because the methods of analysis differ from classical coin-weighing puzzles. We generalize the puzzle by varying the number of participating coins, and deduce a complete solution, perhaps surprisingly, the objective can be achieved in no more than two weighings regardless of the number of coins involved.