POW 2 - King Arthur's table

King Arthur had a game played with his knights, all the knights participating in the game would
have a seat. King Arthur would stand up, outside of the circle, and he would decide whether
your were in or out of the game. He would do that by starting at the 1st chair, and saying you're
in, he would continue to the 2nd chair and saying that you're out, and continuing around the
table, until there was only one knight left.

My problem is; If you knew how many knights were going to be at the table, how could you
quickly determine which chair to sit in so that you would win?

Your task is to develop a general rule, formula or procedure that will predict the winning seat in
terms of the number of knights present. Be sure to explain why your rule works.

If there was 10 knights participating in the game, it would look like this. The knight who won the
game, was the knight in chair 5.

Rounds Round 1 Round 2 Round 3

The number of Chair number 5

the winning chair

Chairs out of the Chair 2, chair 4, chair 6, Chair 2, chair 3, chair 4, chair Chair 1, chair 2, chair 3, chair 4,
game chair 8 and chair 10. 6, chair 7, chair 8 and chair 10. chair, chair 6, chair 7, chair 8,
C C
h h chair 9 and chair 10.
C O a a O
O
C h
Green = out of u u i i O O
u
C
the game h a t t r r u O u
t O
t h O t
a i u u
a u
i r King
King1 1 t
i O t
rO t King
Red = in theOu 9 Arthur
Arthur r u O
O
game ut C
5 h sstable
C Ot
tablehC u2O u Arthur u
t
t Oa h
a u t s table C
u a t O
t i OO i t O
i h u
r uu r u t
r O a
tt t
u i
4 3 r
5 t
5
# of Knights (= x) Knight Who Wins (= y)
1 1
2 1
3 3
4 1
5 3
6 5
7 7
8 1
9 3
10 5
7777777
11 7
12 9
13 11
14 13
15 15
16 1
17 3
18 5
19 7
20 9

So from this table we can see that, y is the knight who wins, and x at you have to count the
number of seats at the table, and the equation on how to found the knight who wins is:
n
2 x +12 = y

This POW was a bit time-consuming and hard to find the pattern, the hardest was differently
part was finding the formula.