Questions tagged [river-crossing]
For questions regarding how to get items or people across something obeying a set of rules.
48
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Nothing but pairs of a kind
The objective is to reduce a given word to nothing in a series of steps.
At each step, remove every occurrence of an adjacent pair of letters of your choosing.
For example:
Problem: Reduce ...
- 13.8k
6
votes
2
answers
206
views
River crossing cats and dogs
A farmer and his $n$ cats and $m$ dogs are on one side of a river. There is a boat that can carry the farmer and at most $k$ animals at once. The boat doesn't move without a person operating it. The ...
- 16.3k
2
votes
1
answer
201
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Crossing desert with smallest amount of water [duplicate]
A man who lives in a desert sends his servant out to collect the flag which is 4 miles away from the man's home. To survive the servant must drink 1 litre of water on every mile he walks (so the ...
- 29
0
votes
2
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Wounded Soldiers/Crossing a Bridge Puzzle - checking a solution
I am working on a Prolog university assignment, where we have to determine what the shortest time is for 4 wounded soldiers to cross a bridge to safety. This seems to be a variation of the more common ...
5
votes
2
answers
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Triple up, pair off, and single out
Can you transform this word triple
PELTS SORES DIVAN
into this word triple
PLOTS DIVES SANER
just by swapping pairs of ...
- 13.8k
17
votes
2
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An overcomplicated Boat Puzzle
Based on Xkcd's Boat Puzzle
At the riverbank, a succession of people have given you a large lump of objects to transport across the river. These are:
101 cabbages
2 goats, one of which eats wolves
4 ...
- 1,487
3
votes
3
answers
210
views
A small pond-crossing
While walking through the flower gardens, you encounter a small group of fairies stuck on a lilypad. There are 2 red fairies, 2 yellow fairies, and 2 green fairies, and they have nothing besides a ...
- 1,487
4
votes
1
answer
201
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A frugal canal-crossing
You've been sent out to round up some escaped animals. While you have some of them under control now, you've ended up trapped on the wrong side of a canal. Currently, you have 5 animals:
A perivine, ...
- 1,487
72
votes
2
answers
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views
Escape across the floorboards
A mad lexophile sits alone in his apartment obsessively rearranging his Scrabble tiles and writing words on every available surface, even filling each floorboard with a word. The Scrabble tiles have ...
- 13.8k
3
votes
1
answer
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Crossing a river with bonds and beefs
Here is a river crossing puzzle (note that whenever I use the term "colors", I mean the squares):
Yellow and Red are on one side of the river, while Pink, Blue, Green and Black are on the ...
- 13.1k
2
votes
2
answers
298
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A river crossing puzzle
Here is a puzzle I came up with.
Ali and Billie are approaching a river from one side, and Casey and Devin from the other side.
Ali shouts: "Do you two also want to cross?"
Casey shouts back:...
- 201
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2
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Minimum time to cross the bridge
There are 6 friends A, B, C, D, E and F who want to cross a bridge. However, there are two problems. First, the bridge can only accommodate two persons at a time. Second, it is night and they need the ...
0
votes
1
answer
301
views
Strait-Crossing Puzzle
You are on an island, and must transport 3 moose across a strait to the mainland. While they can swim across the strait, they will likely end up running into the forest and leaving you behind. While ...
- 1,487
2
votes
3
answers
209
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How do I find the least number of times a shuttle can travel from one place to another?
I often see this situation in exams and I'd like to know if there is any kind of algorithm or shortcut that I can use to solve this puzzle instead of just guessing.
The problem is as follows:
A space ...
- 1,565
4
votes
1
answer
202
views
Terrorists transporting Hostages through the desert
You belong to an intelligence agency that is monitoring some terrorists. There are three of them in the Hideout A with three hostages and a bomb. Unfortunately, this hideout is extremely secure. But ...
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