A quick riddler resolution during a committee meeting (!) of a short riddle: 36 houses stand in a row and collapse at times t=1,2,..,36. In addition, once a house collapses, the neighbours if still standing collapse at the next time unit. What are the shortest and longest lifespans of this row?

Since a house with index i would collapse on its own by time i, the longest lifespan is 36, which can be achieved with the extra rule when the collapsing times are perfectly ordered. For the shortest lifespan, I ran a short R code implementing the rules and monitoring its minimum. Which found 7 as the minimal number for 10⁵ draws. However, with an optimal ordering, one house plus one or two neighbours of the most recently collapsed, leading to a maximal number of collapsed houses after k time units being

1+2(k-1)+1+2(k-2)+….=k+k(k-1)=k²

which happens to be equal to 36 for k=6. (Which was also obtained in 10⁶ draws!) This also gives the solution for any value of k.