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Comment by anu7df | Hacker News Reader

Thank you.. As fun as it was to solve the simple puzzle, nothing will replace the joy I felt when I showed it to my 8 year old daughter to see her solve it in 2 minutes flat with no instruction at all. Thank you for making it possible. I had to ask her to persist for a bit as she didn't exactly see what had to be done. She knew what had to be done once she accidentally swiped and saw to rabbit get dragged along. May be an animation showing what is possible will help here.

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I’m 45 years old and have been staring at it for a very long time without a clue. First off, you’ve raised a wonderful 8 year old and deserve congratulations.

Second, is she available for lessons?? :)

36 y/o, same here

34 year old, probably took me 8 minutes

34yo and also around 8 minutes.

Though, sheepishly, I wouldn't have even mustered the energy had I not seen that someone's kid solved it in two minutes.

Took me about a minute, but I have the mental age of 10, so moving rabbits and a kangaroo (dog?) around makes sense. I just read the boxes/looked at the pictures and moved things around, until the solution was obvious. Just quickly moving things quickly.

If I'd had to think about it without interaction... I'd probably never get it.

I do a lot of graphical work, and have to make things fit / function and the only way to do that is hack it, and then clean it up so it looks planned.

My 9 year old got it in about 3 minutes, but only after I told him to slow down and read everything on the page.

He started with furious swiping right off the bat. I started by reading everything and thinking through moves in my head without even trying to swipe.

I think we ended up solving it in about the same amount of time. Interesting that the rapid iteration method and the measured thoughtful method yielded similar results.

I'm surprised you could infer what was possible just by looking at it. For me, the hints at how the rules worked weren't sufficient. I think lighting up the signs if the conditions are met and perhaps having something on the free move edges to make it clear they can be moved on freely would be super helpful.

I effectively solved the question of "wtf is this?" and the puzzle at the same time.

But after that I really wanted to play again!

I thought it was an image at first, and was trying to mentally move the pieces on the board. After the state got too complicated I happened to tap on one of the pieces and realized it was interactive.

I've played kinda similar things before, such as Baba is You.

Yeah I'd love to see more of these. Now I wanna make one myself.

She's a genius[1]. Took me an age to figure out what the rules were and then a fair while to actually get it done.

[1]Well compared to me anyway

I inferred rules that turned out not to be true:

1) I thought that, obviously, rabbits and dogs couldn't occupy the same space, lest the dog attack the rabbit, causing a lose-condition

2) I assumed that only one animal could occupy a node.

The game, until the last move, is winnable with those extra rules.

I didn't necessarily think of those as rules, but I nevertheless solved the puzzle (until the end) without contradicting them. I only noticed maybe halfway to the solution that there is only one carrot, so obviously the rabbits have to pile up to solve it.

Rabbit and dog never need to occupy the same space.

But yes, I never thought about rule 2 until I got the dog and one rabbit in place and hadn't won.

> I thought that, obviously, rabbits and dogs couldn't occupy the same space

farmer, fox, chicken, and grain, and only three of them can fit in the rowboat

foxes eat chickens and chickens eat grain would be a nice type of constraint OP could add to the puzzles

Seems to me a good comparison between inductive and deductive reasoning. - with a simple logic puzzle like this, both are fairly comparable - especially when some adults (me included) start with the wrong assumption, like two can't be in one node, which will slow down the process

Actually, that's how children learn best: by breaking shit^W^Wperturbing the environment and observing changes.

This instance of the puzzle is also easy enough to actually solve this way. Wouldn't work nearly as well with 25 nodes, 5 rabbits and 3 dogs...

Haha. Thanks for saying that internet stranger! Compared to me as well. It took me quite a bit longer to solve it too, even after i figured the rules.. so I guess kids are just good at adapting to the pretend-laws-world-problem-solving..

Availability bias, keep in mind for kids her age cartoon animals and games like this are their full time job.

My 5yo also enjoyed the puzzle and was excited when he finally figure it out.

The one issue he had was whenever he'd try to move a rabbit from boat to house, he'd accidentally trigger the browser back function because he was starting too close to the edge of the screen. Then the puzzle would be reset when he navigated back to the page.

This caused a lot of frustration because he could be careful when he was thinking about it, but then he'd get absorbed in the puzzle and forget to swipe carefully.

> May be an animation showing what is possible will help here.

Now I'm imagining a version where the animals get antsy and start hopping around on their own if you take too long to make a move.

Your daughter is awesome.

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