Math Riddle: God and the 100 Reasoning Leaguers

[Nelson]

I was just typing that up as you posted. Yeah you were right, I don't know why I didn't think of that earlier, I was set on player 1 picking 2 at random. So for 100 people and 100 coffins with 50 choices, I believe the strategy will be:

Basically everyone gets in order and each person must know everyone else's place in line. Then, when each person enters, the first coffin they pick corresponds to their place in line (i.e. 10th person picks the 10th coffin first). Whatever name you see, you go to that person's place in line. So, if you pick the 10th coffin and you see that the name is Joe Blow, you might then know that he is number 37 in line, so the next coffin that you pick is the 37th. You repeat this for all 50 choices. I believe this is the same strategy discussed by Ozy and I above, just expanded to more people. What do you think?

 

[Ozymandyus]

Sounds like you got it. It's all yours man, I did nothing to add to it really, I gave up a while ago until you brought in the contingencies - for some reason when I thought of trying that it never worked out in my head.

 

[Nelson]

Bouncing ideas of someone else is always helpful. I'm gonna call it a night and check back in the morning to see if Pulsar says yea or nay to this method.

 

[Pulsar]

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! Congratulations Nelson, well done indeed! I'm really impressed, the riddle was very difficult. And congratulations to everyone else involved: Ozymandyus, aeroeng314, Aught3, ebbixx, Master_Ghost_Knight, and all others: your combined efforts have led to the solution. Many thanks, I enjoyed reading your posts, and I hope you enjoyed the puzzle. In its usual form, the riddle involves 100 prisoners and 100 boxes, but I changed the story to prevent you guys from googling
All that's left for me is the full mathematics behind it:

 

[scikidus]

Congrats Nelson! You answer makes a lot of sense. Then again, things are always clearer in hindsight.

 

[Nelson]

Very cool puzzle over all. Your explanation is a bit more comprehensive than mine . Although I can understand the mathematics now when they are presented, what I found particularly interesting was that I was able to reason my way to a logical solution without directly considering the math at the time.