strategy puzzles
| medium | strategy |
After the revolution, each of the 66 citizens of a certain city, including the king, has a salary of 1. King cannot vote, but has the power to suggest changes - namely, redistribution of salaries. Each person's salary must be a whole number of dollars, and the salaries must sum to 66. He suggests a new salary plan for every person including himself in front of the city. Citizens are greedy, and vote yes if their salary is raised, no if decreased, and don't vote otherwise. The suggested plan will be implemented if the number of "yes" votes are more than "no" votes. The king is both, selfish and clever. He proposes a series of such plans. What is the maximum salary he can obtain for himself?
notice: (1) that the king must temporarily give up his own salary to get things started, and (2) that the game is to reduce the number of salaried citizens at each stage.
63
Continuing from the hint, The king begins by proposing that 33 citizens have their salaries doubled to $2, at the expense of the remaining 33 (himself included). Next, he increases the salaries of 17 of the 33 salaried voters (to $3 or $4) while reducing the remaining 16 to $0. In successive turns, the number of salaried voters falls to 9, 5, 3, and 2. Finally, the king bribes three paupers with $1 each to help him turn over the two big salaries to himself, thus finishing with a royal salary of $63. It is not difficult to see that the king can do no better at any stage than to reduce the number of salaried voters to just over half the previous number; in particular, he can never achieve a unique salaried voter. Thus, he can do no better than $63 for himself, and the six rounds above are optimal
Hence the answer is $63
Note: It is possible to reach $65 if the King could vote (that would be a variant of this puzzle).