PUZZLOR
Monopoly
By John Toczek
Winning at board games is often determined by identifying and controlling the most valuable locations on the board. The game board in Figure 1 represents a scaled-down version of the popular board game Monopoly.
This board contains eight tiles. Four of these tiles are property files indicated by the colors green, yellow, red and blue. When a player lands on a property tile, rent is paid to the property owner. The four corner tiles are instructional tiles. If a player lands on a corner tile, he or she immediately follows the instructions on that tile.
All players start on the “START” tile and advance clockwise around the board based on the outcome of the spinner. The spinner has the numbers one through four indicating how many spaces a player moves.
Figure 1: Which property is most valuable to own?
Question:
Which property is the most valuable to own (that is, which property do players end their turn on most often)?
Send your answers to puzzlor@gmail.com by Feb. 15, 2011. The winner, chosen randomly from correct answers, will receive an “O.R.: The Science of Better” T-shirt. Congratulations to David Teale for correctly solving August’s “Relief Mission” PuzzlOR. Past questions can be found at www.puzzlor.com
John Toczek is the senior decision support analyst for ARAMARK Corporation in the Global Risk Management group. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at Drexel University (1996) and a master’s degree in operations research from Virginia Commonwealth University (2005).
