You can't reorder the people in the circle (you're missing this part of the setup), so

1 + 0.5    0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5    [1,1,1]         3 are eliminated
[1]    0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5    0.5 + 1    [1,1]    3 are eliminated
1 + 0.5    [0.5 + 0.5]    0.5 + 1    [1,1]    4 are eliminated

i've been timing out at 12 sec

How are you choosing when to cross over the two chromosomes? I had this problem too before I changed it to be random across the string's length.

I think 7 seconds is the max

just add 'console.log(list);' to the begining of the function 'list' is what ever variable you use as an argument

var variance = function(list) { console.log(list);
...