This is a clowns show. Sil is clearly defeated, FJ never was seriously engaging, Carleas seems to think it’s not credible to have a position that he finds difficult to challenge. Phyllo seems to side with James, which means that he’s seeing the utter bullshit of the other arguments.
Carleas and FJ think that the intellect gains credibility by looking away, becoming frustrated, and ignoring whole strings of argumentation.
I’ve admitted being wrong thrice in this thread, never had certainly until I saw there was absolutely no other way of thinking about this problem except to step beyond to stupid guru-trick, which is a heinously clever fools-bait, nothing to do with logic whatsoever.
I first thought it produced a necessary bias. Now I see it’s unnecessary bias. The thing works easily with 4 blues and 4 browns, all get off the island without the guru. If we accept the wait-a-day scheme on which the canonical solution relies and which contradicts the puzzle’s explanation.
Since James was a couple of steps ahead of me all the time (which I didn’t admit until I tried the scheme with both blue and brown simultaneously) I trust he’s capable of continuing the puzzle without the handy wait-one-day agreement to which no one actually is known to agree, since all see each other at all times (as they (do not) leave for the ferry). I am not willing to go there until a reasonable number of posters has come to their senses and seen that the guru is for the birds.