POW #1 - Hide and Seek

I am hiding in one of the five boxes. The boxes are numbered one to five and are all sitting in a
row, lined up in order. Each night, I will hide in an adjacent box, exactly one box away from the
box I’m in during the day. Each morning, you can open exactly one box to see if I am in there.
Can you say with certainty that you will find me? How can you go about this hide and seek
game to ensure you find me?

Honors Question: Try this with 4 boxes, 6 boxes, and then see if you can come up with a plan
for n - boxes.

I am not expecting you to be able to solve this problem without help. I, however, would like to
see your thinking about the problem and how you would go about winning the game of hide and
seek. This problem has been used for tech interviews to see the thought process of their
applicants, not necessary to see how smart the applicants are.
Problem Statement: I am trying to find a strategy to ensure that you will be found in the game
of hide and seek, in which you are hiding in one of n boxes and moving to an adjacent box each
night, while I can open only one box each morning.

Process/Solution: My initial thoughts on the problem are that, since the person can only move
one box left or right each night, they must be in the middle boxes on the first night. My first steps
will be to consider different scenarios for the number of boxes and to use the process of
elimination to narrow down the possible location of the person each morning. For 5 boxes, my
thought process is that on the first morning, if I open boxes 2,3 and 4, the person can only be in
one of the two remaining boxes. Therefore, on the second morning, I can open one of those two
boxes and find the person with certainty. This would take 2 tries.For 4 boxes, my thought
process is that on the first morning, if I open boxes 1 and 4, the person can only be in one of the
two remaining boxes. Therefore, on the second morning, I can open one of those two boxes and
find the person with certainty. This would take 2 tries. For 6 boxes, my thought process is that
on the first morning, if I open boxes 2,3 and 4, the person can only be in one of the 3 remaining
boxes. Therefore, on the second morning, I can open one of those three boxes and find the
person with certainty. This would take 2 tries.

Reflection: To be completely honest, even though I had help from people, I still don’t quite
understand how to solve this completely or if I meet the requirement to fully solve the problem. I
feel like this question is very tricky and made me think.