{
  "id": 18131744,
  "title": "Hannah Fry: How to win The Traitors with maths (step one, don’t get made a traitor)",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/04/hannah-fry-how-to-win-the-traitors-with-maths-step-one-dont-get-made",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-11-04T14:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "New Scientist",
    "slug": "new-scientist",
    "url": "https://www.newscientist.com/article/2597314-hannah-fry-how-to-win-the-traitors-with-maths-step-one-dont-get-made-a-traitor/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "In the late 1980s, a Soviet-era psychologist named Dmitry Davydov invented a game called Mafia, which later evolved into the popular TV show The Traitors. The show's premise involves a small group of traitors secretly working together to \"murder\" players, while the rest of the players try to identify and vote off the traitors. Hannah Fry, a mathematician, was one of the show's participants and approached it with excitement, hoping to apply her analytical skills to solve the mystery. Fry began by analyzing previous series of the UK show, compiling data into a spreadsheet to identify patterns in players' behavior. She discovered that traitors often make \"burn votes\" by voting for an innocent player, as well as voting against their fellow traitors when it seemed certain they would be eliminated. Other clues included failing to vote for a traitor when it was their turn and arriving late to breakfast alongside a traitor who was later revealed to be on the opposing team. Despite these insights, Fry acknowledged that there were no definitive ways to identify a traitor, as the faithful players were unpredictable, and their suspicious actions could easily be misinterpreted.",
  "summary": "With a little help from Alan Turing and Thomas Bayes, I came up with a mathematical model I hoped would help me win The Traitors. Unfortunately, events then got in the way, writes Professor Hannah Fry in her latest column",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}