Can you solve the jail break riddle? - Dan Finkel

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Your timing made you and your partner infamous bank robbers. Now, you need to use that timing to break out of jail. Your partner is about to flash you a signal, and exactly 45 seconds later the electric fence circuit will short out. Then you notice that your watch is broken, and all you have are two 1-minute fuses in your pocket. Can you time your escape and get free? Dan Finkel shows how.

Lesson by Dan Finkel, directed by Artrake Studio.

Your timing made you and your partner

the most infamous bank robbers
in the west.

Now, you’ll need to use that timing
to help you break out of jail.

At the appointed time, you’ll be walking
in the yard near the electric fence.

Your partner will flash you the signal,

and exactly 45 seconds later,

short out the fence circuit.

It’ll automatically restart
after a second or two,

but as long as you move fast,

you’ll be home free.

And then you notice,

to your horror,

that your watch is broken,

and there’s no time to fix it.

The signal is coming,

and if you make even a small mistake
in counting off 45 seconds,

you’ll get fried.

Searching your pockets,

you find something that might help:

a lighter and two fuses you made earlier
in the prison work program.

Each fuse is a length of flammable twine,

built to be lit on either end
and burn for precisely one minute.

The problem is that even though
the fuses look uniform,

they don’t burn evenly,

so if you cut one in half, for example,

one side might burn longer than the other.

Your partner is going to give
the signal any minute,

and you’ll have to make your move.

How can you use the fuses and lighter
to time exactly 45 seconds?

Pause the video to figure it out yourself.

Answer in 3

Answer in 2

Answer in 1

The length of the fuse may
not tell you anything,

but you do know the fuses take exactly
60 seconds to burn from end to end.

Here’s the key insight:

If you start a fuse on one side
and it burns for 30 seconds,

there’ll still be 30 seconds of fuse left.

If you had started it from the other end,

it would’ve reached the exact
same spot in thirty seconds.

That means that if you lit it
from both ends simultaneously,

it would burn out in precisely 30 seconds.

But how will you time the last fifteen?

That’ll have to come from the second fuse.

If it were a 30 second fuse,

you’d be able to use that same trick again

to double the burning speed and
make it last exactly 15 seconds.

And, you realize, you can
shorten the second fuse

by lighting one end of it at the same time
as you light the first.

At the moment the first burns out,

you’ll be left with 30 seconds
on the second fuse.

Just when you’ve got this all figured out,

you see the signal from your partner,

and spring into action.

You gather the four ends of the two
fuses and light three of them.

The moment the first burns out,

you light the other end
of the second fuse.

When it flickers and dies,

you know that exactly 45
seconds have passed,

and the electric fence is dead.

By the time it hiccups back to life,

you’re over the fence and home free.