How much did I win?

What this information-theory puzzle tests

This is an easy puzzle that probes your understanding of information content and the power of binary search. It's the kind of problem that appears in quant interviews to see whether you can reason about the limits of what questions can reveal.

The core insight is that each yes-or-no question partitions the remaining possibilities into two groups. Your goal is to determine the maximum number of distinct outcomes you can distinguish given a fixed budget of questions. This maps directly to fundamental information theory: how much entropy can you resolve with a given number of bits?

• Binary search and decision trees
• Information capacity and entropy
• Optimal vs. greedy question strategies