Celebrity Traitors star Hannah Fry has a ‘mathematically rigorous’ plan to catch Traitors

Professor Hannah Fry went on The Celebrity Traitors with a complex plan to catch Traitors using maths. Of course she did.

Hannah explained on her YouTube: “Before I went into the castle, I spent a frankly ludicrous amount of time trying to come up with the most statistically perfect approach to catch me some Traitors. And I think I found one.” She filmed herself talking through the strategy before she headed off to the castle, then uploaded it this weekend. Hannah – who is the Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge – worked on her plan with Jess Enright and Ella Yates from the University of Glasgow, and the YouTuber Matt Parker. So much through has gone into this.

Hannah’s methodology was inspired by Alan Turing’s strategy for cracking the Enigma Machine. “He started off with the list of all the possibilities, and then eliminated everything that wouldn’t work, to sort of get to the final answer,” Hannah explained.

Hannah looking deep in thought on The Celebrity Traitors
(Image via BBC iPlayer)

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Here’s the gist. Since The Celebrity Traitors 2026 cast consisted of 21 people, there are theoretically 1,330 possible combinations of Traitors. Hannah called each potential set of Traitors a “universe”. Hannah’s plan is to eliminate all the universes that wouldn’t realistically happen. That includes scenarios in which Hannah is a Traitor (as she asked to be a Faithful), or the Traitors are three similar people (such as three male comedians, or three actors). At that point, the list of possible combinations is already down to 618.

Hannah guessed it would be unlikely to ever have three Traitors seated in a row at breakfast or a Round Table, or transported in the same car, or to be the last ones to come into breakfast. She hoped that as the game went on, she’d be able to eliminate more and more options until it was clearer who the Traitors could be.

We’ll have to wait for more Celebrity Traitors episodes to see how helpful Hannah Fry’s approach is.

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