Puzzle #13: Mouse Trap
You have five cabinets lined up in a row, and there is a mouse hiding in one of them. Each day, you can open one cabinet to try to find the mouse. If you don’t find it, you close the cabinet, and that night, the mouse moves to one of the cabinets adjacent to it (e.g., if the mouse was hiding in cabinet 2, then it must move to either cabinet 1 or cabinet 3 that night. If the mouse was hiding on the end in cabinet 1, then it must move to cabinet 2 that night, etc.) What sequence of cabinet openings should you use to guarantee that you find the mouse in the fewest number of days, regardless of the mouse’s strategy?
Find the solution at the bottom of this page.
