Thursday, June 25, 2015

"Back from the Klondike" Solution

6/25/2016



Loyd's given solution to the puzzle is to move southwest twice, northeast three times, southwest three times and end with what Loyd calls a "bold strike via southeast. to liberty!".

In 1976, two graduate students at the University of Washington wrote a Fortran program to solve the puzzle, and discovered hundreds of possible solutions, all of them eventually converging on a square which was part of Loyd's given solution. All of these routes also passed through a particular square which was not part of Loyd's solution, suggesting an artist's error in drawing the original puzzle. Changing this square from a "2" to a "1" results in a puzzle which only has a single solution.


Further Reading:









David

No comments:

Post a Comment