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There are 1600 people sitting around a circular table. The first person (person 1) has a sword and kills the second person then hands it to the next alive person (in this case person 3). Person 3 stabs person 4 and gives the sword to person 5. This goes on until person 1599 kills person 1600. Then person 1 kills person 3 and so on. This is repeated until there is only a single person remaining.

Who remains in the end?

(Credit goes to my wonderful 10th grade math teacher, a brilliant man with many great riddles!)

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    $\begingroup$ is this the same as puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/371/…? $\endgroup$
    – SteveV
    Commented Oct 17, 2019 at 19:54
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    $\begingroup$ Should it be "This goes on until person 1599 kills person 1600." instead of 1499 and 1500? $\endgroup$
    – GrumpyLlama59
    Commented Oct 17, 2019 at 19:54
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    $\begingroup$ Should 1500 and 1600 be the same number? $\endgroup$
    – Joshua Bizley
    Commented Oct 17, 2019 at 19:55

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It seems to me that

The last person remaining will be Person 1, regardless of how many people you start out with.

The way the murdering works,

When you finish one round of murders, you start over again with Person 1 doing the murdering rather than cycling around to let someone from the end of the line murder someone at the front. No one gets a chance to murder Person 1, so Person 1 will win.

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    $\begingroup$ I think it is meant to be that the last person would kill the first person if they got a turn to kill someone. $\endgroup$
    – Joshua Bizley
    Commented Oct 17, 2019 at 20:01
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    $\begingroup$ Start with eleven people and see what happens... $\endgroup$
    – Daniel Mathias
    Commented Oct 17, 2019 at 20:24
  • $\begingroup$ What happens when you start with eleven people depends on how the rules are formulated. As presented, the rules can be interpreted in more than one way. (My interpretation is informed somewhat by my own experiences with 10th grade math teachers.) $\endgroup$
    – Ryan Veeder
    Commented Oct 17, 2019 at 20:40

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