TPCW3: Uh-Oh.

Gwen Stacy and Spiderman are separated on a 3 3 by 3 3 grid at lattice points inside ( 0 , 0 ) (0, 0) , ( 3 , 3 ) (3, 3) , ( 0 , 3 ) (0,3) , and ( 3 , 0 ) (3,0) . Spiderman is at ( 3 , 3 ) (3, 3) , and Gwen is at ( 0 , 0 ) (0, 0) . Spiderman must get to Gwen. Unfortunately, Electro is at ( 1 , 1 ) (1,1) , and Spiderman can either avoid Electro, or if he gets to Electro, he has a 2 3 \frac{2}{3} chance of passing easily and safely, and 1 9 \frac{1}{9} chance of barely passing, but if this happens, he gets thrown back to ( 2 , 2 ) (2, 2) . Gwen cannot move at all, and Spiderman can only move left or down 1 1 unit at a time (with equal probability).

The probability that Spiderman gets to Gwen is a b \frac{a}{b} where a a and b b are coprime and positive integers. Find a + b a+b .


The answer is 65.

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1 solution

David Lee
May 12, 2014

*sigh i'll try to explain this, it might fail. and i did not recieve an email.

There are 4C2=6 ways to get from 3,3 to 1,1.

Then 2/3 of that for him getting by, then 2 ways from 1,1 to 0,0, all over 6C3=20, so we get 8/20=2/5.

We also multiply the 6 by 1/9, then 6 ways to get from 2,2 to 0,0 and divide by 20 to get 4/20=1/5.

now, apparently the correct answer is 3/5.... *sigh *frustrated

k ill change this thing. if my answer is wrong again, this problem go bye bye in the trash.

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