Monkeys and Ladders

It is well known that monkeys like bananas. Suppose we have some (finite number of) ladders, and as many monkeys. Each monkey is assigned a ladder, and at the top of each ladder there is a banana. Between the ladders, we connect some (finitely many) ropes: each rope connects two ladders (though a rope could connect a ladder to itself). Each monkey begins climbing up his ladder, traversing a rope whenever he reaches one, and continuing to climb on the ladder he ends up on. We wont think of two ropes connecting at the same point: that is, monkeys never have to choose which path to take. The question is: does each monkey get a banana? Below is an example of how this might go:

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Before we prove that yes, each monkey does his own banana, we need to prove that something doesnt go wrong: that each monkey reaches the top of some ladder, i.e. doesnt get stuck in some infinite loop of ropes and ladders. Lemma 1: Each monkey reaches the top of some ladder. Proof: Suppose there were some monkey that didnt reach the top of any ladder. That monkey must have traversed infinitely many ropes, since if he traversed only finitely many ropes, then after traversing the last rope he would have climbed to the top of the ladder he ended up on. Since there are only finitely many ropes, he must have crossed some rope in the same direction infinitely many times (else only finitely many times in each direction finitely many times total). Call this rope X (as in the diagram below), the ladder that our monkey met rope X on infinitely many times on ladder 1 (letting the direction he crossed it in infinitely many times be from right to left WLOG). To get back to rope X after the first time, some rope must have taken us to some point below rope Xon ladder 1: call this rope Y . In partiular, rope Y should be the rope he crossed just before crossing rope X, i.e., there are no other ropes coming from ladder 1 between ropes Y and X. (Note that ropes X and Y could be the same rope: this isnt the case in the diagram, but our argument still works.) Now, a question arises: how did we get to rope X the very first time? It cant have been from some point below y, since then we would have crossed rope Y before crossing X. And it couldnt have been another rope that brought us there, since there are no other ropes between x and y. This is a contradiction: therefore, no such ropes exist, and each monkey reaches the top of some ladder.

times on ladder 1 (letting the direction he crossed it in infinitely many times be from right to left WLOG). To get back to rope X after the first time, some rope must have taken us to some point below rope Xon ladder 1: call this rope Y . In partiular, rope Y should be the rope he crossed just before crossing rope X, i.e., there are no other ropes Monkeys and Bananas.nb coming from ladder 1 between ropes Y and X. (Note that ropes X and Y could be the same rope: this isnt the case in the diagram, but our argument still works.) Now, a question arises: how did we get to rope X the very first time? It cant have been from some point below y, since then we would have crossed rope Y before crossing X. And it couldnt have been another rope that brought us there, since there are no other ropes between x and y. This is a contradiction: therefore, no such ropes exist, and each monkey reaches the top of some ladder.

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What this lemma actually proves is that no monkey traverses any direction of any ladder more than once. To prove the theorem, we need only make one final observation: that two monkeys cannot end up at the same banana. Theorem: Each monkey gets a banana. Proof: Suppose two monkeys reached the same banana. Then we may trace the path from that banana backwards, since we use the same rules for going down this system of ladders and ropes as we do for going up: whenever you reach a rope, cross it, else keep climbing down. By lemma 1, we must end up at the bottom of the system eventually, and the path is unique there is a ladder we end up at the bottom of. But no two monkeys started at the bottom of the same ladder, a contradiction. Therefore, no two monkeys reach the same banana. We may now prove the theorem directly: for each monkey climbs to the top of some ladder by lemma 1, and it is not the same ladder as any other monkey. That is, each monkey gets a banana for himself.