Hannah Fry: How to win The Traitors with maths (step one, don’t get made a traitor)

New Scientist · Hannah Fry · 2026-11-04 14:00 UTC

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

In the late 1980s, in Soviet-era Russia, a young psychologist called Dmitry Davydov came up with a game about power and information. He called it Mafia and originally intended it as a teaching device, a way to demonstrate how a small, informed minority could manipulate the dynamics of a much larger, uninformed group and wield outsized power over those who were left floundering in uncertainty and paranoia.

Almost 40 years later, that game has evolved into The Traitors – a TV show that is such a massive cultural phenomenon in the UK that the opening episode of this year’s celebrity edition drew more viewers to BBC One than watched England’s World Cup semi-final against Argentina.

And recently I found myself in the middle of it.

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