Hacker News Reader

Comment by gorgoiler | Hacker News Reader

I love it. Fantastic.

Can you think of a way to re formulate the puzzle so that you can express the rules without words?

Also, the dog / rabbit dynamic (as used in the classic dog/duck/grain river crossing puzzle) made me think that I had to chase the rabbits with dog, or that dogs and rabbits couldn’t share a node. Different animals might be better — rabbit and mouse, perhaps? Or even different coloured rabbits and different coloured carrots?

The words thing though — that’s what you should work on next, I think. Good puzzles like this are word-free in the puzzle itself (Stephen’s sausage roll, English country tune).

It would take this puzzle from great to excellent. Good luck. More please!

View on HN

> Also, the dog / rabbit dynamic (as used in the classic dog/duck/grain river crossing puzzle) made me think that I had to chase the rabbits with dog, or that dogs and rabbits couldn’t share a node.

Yes, I assumed first that no two animals could share a node at all until I was near the end (and saw that it would be necessary), and I still assumed that rabbits and the dog couldn't share a node ("the dog will eat the rabbit!") because of the river crossing thing, until someone in this very comment thread mentioned an unsolvable state that involved getting the dog a rabbit on the same node.

> saw that it would be necessary

FYI It's not necessary to solve the puzzle.

Also it seems to have issues on FF/Linux because when I did stack a dog and a rabbit I could only then select the dog.

It is necessary to stack the rabbits on each other at the carrot, no?

It is common knowledge that rabbits stack rather naturally.

Don't stack your rabbits. That's how you end up with extra rabbits.

I did it without stacking until the very end. I wasn't sure if you just needed to get 1 rabbit on the carrot, or what.

Oh haha, yeah I guess so then. Sorry, I missed that.

> formulate the puzzle so that you can express the rules without words?

Perhaps just a picture of the state icon (or one with a slash through it) and have it "light up" when the condition is satisfied.

>Can you think of a way to re formulate the puzzle so that you can express the rules without words?

I'm imagining Haskell with emojis now.

Why imagine it? It is already possible :P

https://gist.github.com/Erk-/be3ef032d31734b6f835edd9a9685af...

And I thought I had a sick and twisted mind...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com