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The box problem that baffled the boffins

The solution to today’s puzzle

Earlier today I set you the following puzzle, which has been doing the rounds in the academic community, because of its counter-intuitive result. A few years ago it was picked up by StackExchange, and more recently by Gil Kalai, a former plenary speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians, on his blog. The puzzle is interesting to professional mathematicians because even they struggle to find an intuitive explanation for why Andrew gets a prize first.

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