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Comment by stormdennis | Hacker News Reader

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.

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

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.

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.

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