riddler-castles/castle-solutions: 56

This directory contains the data behind the submissions for castles puzzle.

castle-solutions.csv contains the submissions for Can You Rule Riddler Nation?
castle-solutions-2.csv contains the submissions for The Battle For Riddler Nation, Round 2
castle-solutions-3.csv contains the submissions for Are You The Best Warlord?
castle-solutions-4.csv contains the submissions for A Peaceful (But Not Peaceful) Transition Of Power In Riddler Nation
castle-solutions-5.csv contains the submissions for The Fifth Battle For Riddler Nation, in which there were 13 castles rather than the usual 10

Readers were asked to submit a strategy for the following “Colonel Blotto”-style game:

In a distant, war-torn land, there are 10 castles. There are two warlords: you and your archenemy. Each castle has its own strategic value for a would-be conqueror. Specifically, the castles are worth 1, 2, 3, …, 9, and 10 victory points. You and your enemy each have 100 soldiers to distribute, any way you like, to fight at any of the 10 castles. Whoever sends more soldiers to a given castle conquers that castle and wins its victory points. If you each send the same number of troops, you split the points. You don’t know what distribution of forces your enemy has chosen until the battles begin. Whoever wins the most points wins the war.

Submit a plan distributing your 100 soldiers among the 10 castles. Once I receive all your battle plans, I’ll adjudicate all the possible one-on-one matchups. Whoever wins the most wars wins the battle royale and is crowned king or queen of Riddler Nation!

The data includes all valid submissions, with solvers’ identifying information removed. The 11 columns represent the soldiers deployed to each of the 10 castles, plus a column where the reader could describe his or her strategic approach.

Correction

Please see the following commit: https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/commit/c3f808fda5b67aa26ea6fa663ddd4d2eb7c6187f

Data source: https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/blob/master/riddler-castles/castle-solutions.csv

This data as json, copyable

rowid	Castle 1	Castle 2	Castle 3	Castle 4	Castle 5	Castle 6	Castle 7	Castle 8	Castle 9	Castle 10	Why did you choose your troop deployment?
56	11	11	11	11	12	12	26	2	2	2	To win each round, you only need to win 28 points. Winning any more than 28 points doesn't do you any good - a win is a win, whether by 1 point or 10 points. I identified what I believe will be popular strategies, and developed one that can beat them. I suspect the most popular strategies will be the Even All Strategy, the Top 4 Strategy, and the Bottom 7 Strategy. I also believe some players will employ versions of the Marginal Strategy, which I employ here. I am playing what I call the Marginal-Low Strategy. This troop deployment is susceptible to a variation of the Even Strategy that evenly distributes forces to a smaller number of castles, rather than 10 across the board.