Have fun

December 23, 2005 11:11 AM

Friday Java Fun - Junk's Hanoi, a cool puzzle for this lovely Festivus.
posted by knave (19 comments total)

ESC 6 M-x hanoi
posted by rswst8 at 11:38 AM on December 23, 2005

Festivus requires feats of strength, not feats of mind. You've disappointed me....again.
posted by mullacc at 11:40 AM on December 23, 2005

holy smokes this is tricky
posted by zeoslap at 11:47 AM on December 23, 2005

Fun puzzle! Finished in 176 moves -- pretty sloppy performance on my part.
posted by brain_drain at 11:51 AM on December 23, 2005

Hooray! "Complete with minimum moves!" Had to step back a few times though, to see what I'd done in previous steps.
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 12:00 PM on December 23, 2005

Once you get the basic pattern of moves the rest becomes fairly easy.

getting that pattern however...
posted by bitdamaged at 12:04 PM on December 23, 2005

Ok, I finally beat it, with the minimum number of moves! (161/161)
posted by knave at 12:05 PM on December 23, 2005

163 moves.

Finding the central pattern for me involved a bit of a dissociative state. As soon as I started to think about what the next move was, I got stuck.
posted by googly at 12:08 PM on December 23, 2005

minimum number of moves! yay!

it's all about shuffling stuff between the three 'deposit' areas, and you basically have to cycle though all the 'deposit' combinations before you can get the pieces in the right order. I wish I could explain it better but my brain is frazzled from solving the puzzle. I could do it a few more times and formulate a clear and easily explained strategy, but... I've already wasted enough of my life on this one.
posted by adrien at 12:09 PM on December 23, 2005

The name is somewhat of a clue. In the Towers of Hanoi, you cannot place a larger disc onto a smaller one. In this game, that rule is not enforced, but if you break it, you're going down the wrong path.
posted by knave at 12:11 PM on December 23, 2005

I had this headache before I started playing the game because I forgot to eat again. And then I clicked the link and started moving the colorful blocks around. It didn't seem possible but I kept moving them and moving them and then something happened. I'm not sure what though. And my headache went away. Hooray knave.
posted by panoptican at 12:11 PM on December 23, 2005

"Finding the central pattern for me involved a bit of a dissociative state. As soon as I started to think about what the next move was, I got stuck."

For me it was a question of finding the way to elaborate the pattern I stumbled upon to get the first piece 'out' (moving the E piece right and down, moving the D piece right and up, moving the E piece back up and left, moving the D piece down, ...) From there is was trial and error (ok, well, random flailing) to figure out how to proceed. To solve it I ended up muttering the movements to find the patterns.
posted by adrien at 12:16 PM on December 23, 2005

Complete with minimum moves on the first try. It seemed like some hidden part of my brain figured out the pattern while the concious part hadn't fully caught on. There were a few times near the end when I was pretty sure things didn't look right, but I just let my mouse hand keep moving and it finished perfectly.
posted by H-Bar at 12:29 PM on December 23, 2005

Ow, my carpal tunnel syndrome!

Yup, it's Towers of Hanoi all right, but still satisfying to complete. You might notice that in the course of the solution, you "visit" all solutions to subproblems--for instance, you'll have E, D, C, and B in the lower right corner at some point. That's because the solution is recursive: In order to solve a problem with n discs, solve the problem with n-1 discs, then shift the nth disc over to the upper right, then move the n-1 discs back to the upper left (inverting the solution to the problem on n-1 discs), then shift the nth disc down to the lower right, then re-solve the problem with n-1 discs.

As you might guess, since you have to solve the problem twice for n-1 discs, you'll have to solve it 4 times for n-2, 8 for n-3, and so on. (Sloppy explanation, but you get the picture.) The general solution is exponential in n--thankfully, Junk had n=5.
posted by A dead Quaker at 1:36 PM on December 23, 2005

These kind of puzzles make me hurt. Hmph, and I'm supposed to be one of the most spatially gifted at my school!
posted by Citizen Premier at 1:50 PM on December 23, 2005

Screw the towers of Hanoi. That's not a puzzle, that's computer food. Here are some better puzzles. And here are some more.

Recommends: blobs, ye olde blocks, conslides, marbles, planks, rolling bock color zones, no left turns.
posted by fleacircus at 3:25 PM on December 23, 2005

Agreed -- I don't remember if this really was ever an ancient puzzle, but it's basically less a puzzle than a combinatorial sort. Of course the same may be said of a Rubik's Cube ...
posted by dhartung at 4:40 PM on December 23, 2005

Thanks, fleacircus. No left turns was my favorite because that's how I drive.
posted by jewzilla at 5:40 PM on December 23, 2005

Ditto Knave.
posted by Toecutter at 8:51 PM on December 24, 2005