Questions tagged [pursuit-evasion]
Any puzzle where a team of pursuers must capture a team of targets, with movement limited to some given space. The goal is to find a winning strategy either for the pursuers or for the evaders.
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Quirky chasing problem along train network [closed]
Echidna and Numbat are friends, so they decide to go on vacation together to visit Central American caves and volcanos. But these two friends have very different traveling philosophies. Numbat prefers ...
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More Catching of Cats
After my first puzzle on this theme was solved relatively quickly, here is a (trickier) follow up question in the same vein!
The setup is similar - you are in a room with an infinite line of boxes, ...
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Catching a Cat on an infinite Line
Upon entering a (very) large room, you are faced with an infinite line of cardboard boxes that are labeled, in order, by the nonnegative integers. In one of these boxes, a cat is hiding, but you do ...
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How long will it take for the horse to be captured?
Source: https://open.kattis.com/problems/ambush
Problem: When Farmer Oskar doesn’t watch his cows closely enough, they tend to wander off into the forest to hunt for horse spies. To catch an enemy ...
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Flee the Bandits
You're heading out to pick up your partner in crime's little sister from the train station. You're nearly there: between you and the train station is a small square of blocks, with 5 North-South ...
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Caught in the storage maze, part 2
One of your sister's former friends has gotten herself lost in a storage room in some abandoned building, and you've decided to go capture her and turn her in.
However, when you enter you realize ...
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Caught in the storage maze
Two of your sister's former friends have gotten themselves lost in a storage room in some abandoned building. While your girlfriend managed to get one of them out, the other one apparently got turned ...
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How will the wolf catch the sheep in minimum time?
A wolf is trying to catch two sheep. At time $0$ the wolf's at $(0,0)$ and the sheep are at $(1,0)$. All animals move continuously in real time and react instantaneously according to each other's ...
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Can you stop copy Alice?
At time 0, Alice and you both move freely at speed 1 on the plane.
As each hour passes, all copies of Alice will subdivide into 2, each moving at half the speed of the parent. So if left alone, at ...
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Can you Avoid the Spear-Wielding Gladiator?
You are trapped in a circular coliseum, and a gladiator with a spear is chasing you. You can't defend yourself, but you can run faster than the gladiator.
You run at 11 feet per second, and the ...
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Catch the invisible and omniscient thief
The thief has stolen two powerful artifacts: the Cloak of Invisibility and the Glasses of the Oracle. Now they're equipped with both. The cop at the bottom, not knowing where the thief is, is trying ...
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Can you escape from two lions?
You're at the center of a circular arena. A pair of lions are at the border, planning to catch you. One of them moves as fast as you, but the other moves slower than you. The three of you are confined ...
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Can the lion protect the sheep from the wolves?
In a closed arena, three wolves are on the vertices of an equilateral triangle at the border. The sheep and his lion friend are at the center.
The wolf eats the sheep if their distance is $0$, and ...
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Police and Thieves
I played this game when I was young, but cannot find it online. It is played on a checkers board (e.g. the black squares of a chess board) between two players P and T. The game goes as follows:
P ...
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Can the cop catch the thief?
The cop and the thief, both mathematical points, live in an open interval $(0,1)\subset \mathbb{R}$. That is, their universe is a line segment of length 1 without the 2 endpoints. We know that both ...
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