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Can you solve the control room riddle? - Dennis Shasha

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TEDEd Animation

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As your country's top spy, you must infiltrate the headquarters of the evil syndicate, find the secret control panel, and deactivate their death ray. But your reconnaissance team is spotty, and you have only limited information about the control panel's whereabouts. Can you solve the control room riddle and deactivate their weapon in time? Dennis Shasha shows you how.

In the answer to the puzzle, you may have drawn circles representing rooms and lines between circles to represent connections. Suppose you wanted to draw actual rooms with doors. Try to draw out a set of rooms (some can have odd shapes), five of them have three doors to other rooms and one has just one door to another room.

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TED-Ed Animations feature the words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators. Are you an educator or animator interested in creating a TED-Ed Animation? Nominate yourself here »

Meet The Creators

  • Educator Dennis E. Shasha
  • Script Editor Alex Gendler
  • Producer Zedem Media
  • Director Michael Kalopaidis
  • Sound Designer Andreas Trachonitis
  • Animator Maria Savva, Andria Pourouti
  • Artist Jeanne Bornet
  • Narrator Addison Anderson

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