Reversing the moves in a checker jumping problem was an approach preferred by Leibniz to solving the game of solitaire. The applet below follows the same idea for the puzzle of Sending Scouts into the Desert. (I am grateful to an anonymous visitor for suggesting that, for this puzzle, the move reversal may also help solve the problem.)

The task here is to get a scout (or scouts) out of the desert and into an inhabitable area. As in the original puzzle, the two areas are separated by a horizontal line, with the desert being the top one. To move a scout (a red chip), click on it and then click on the intended new location. This is only possible if the new location is empty (blank), is 2 units away from the scout either horizontally or vertically, and if the intermediate location is empty. As the result of these actions, the scout will move to the new location and another will pop up (by magic, no doubt) at the location jumped over.

The goal now is to leave the desert void of the scouts.

Fibonacci Numbers

1. Ceva's Theorem: A Matter of Appreciation
2. When the Counting Gets Tough, the Tough Count on Mathematics
3. I. Sharygin's Problem of Criminal Ministers
4. Single Pile Games
5. Take-Away Games
6. Number 8 Is Interesting
7. Curry's Paradox
8. A Problem in Checker-Jumping
   • Getting a Scout out of Desert
9. Fibonacci's Quickies

Golden Ratio

1. Golden Ratio in Geometry
2. Golden Ratio in an Irregular Pentagon
3. Golden Ratio in a Irregular Pentagon II
4. Inflection Points of Fourth Degree Polynomials
5. Wythoff's Nim
6. Inscribing a regular pentagon in a circle - and proving it
7. Cosine of 36 degrees
8. Continued Fractions

|Contact| |Front page| |Contents| |Games| |Impossible| |Activities| |Store|

Copyright © 1996-2010 Alexander Bogomolny