Questions tagged [strategy]
A puzzle whose solution is a methodological plan of action for realizing a specific goal.
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Minimum moves to lose grid game
Here is a number grid:
And here is the rule for how to move:
A move consists of selecting two adjacent squares (either vertically, horizontally or diagonally) and dividing the sum of the two numbers ...
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Minimum number of moves to win this number game
This puzzle is inspired by this puzzle that I answered: Is equality possible?
Here is the number grid from that puzzle:
And here is the rule for how to move:
A move consists of selecting two ...
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1000 gold coins to share with the knight
Note: This riddle is similar to this riddle: 1000 gold coins to share with the king, except now YOU are the king, and the rules are switched up a bit. And the situation is wackier...
You are the King ...
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Spies in Puzzlevania
What I am about to tell you doesn't leave this room. For the past year, we've grown concerned by occurrences in the nation of Puzzlevania. We believe a major attack may be imminent. However, the ...
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1000 gold coins to share with the king
You are the knight of a great kingdom in an unknown world. Your king sent you to a dungeon and you killed the dragon and got 1000 gold coins from the dragon’s lair. Normally, you are supposed to give ...
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How to know which head belongs to which tail in a bunch of wires? [duplicate]
I saw a puzzle in a contest in Iran held by an association called "Rahneshan" and the original text of the contest is uploaded HERE and of course both website and text are in Persian.
...
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A harder robot-control puzzle
The goal is to find a sequence (a "program") of max 5 commands that will move the triangle (the "robot") through the grid and make it visit all the squares marked with a star.
Two ...
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Minimise battle time in Monster's Den
So there is this excellent flash game, Monster's Den. In order to make a high score, I must complete many battles..this question is about battles with the Legendary Monsters.
The target is to reduce ...
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A nice robot-control puzzle
The goal is to find a sequence (a "program") of max 6 commands that will move the triangle (the "robot") through the grid and make it visit all the squares marked with a star.
Two ...
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Lap Theory Optimal Betting Game
Three prisoners are seated at a table. Each of them has a mobile phone on their lap, and they are not allowed to look at anyone else’s phone (and obviously no other form of communication is allowed).
...
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19 balls and a scale [duplicate]
You are given 19 identical-looking balls and a two-sided scale. One of the balls is different, either lighter or heavier than the others. Using 4 weighings of the scale, how can you determine which ...
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Three way duel, which guns to choose?
Alice, Bob and Carole are involved in a game of three way duel. They take turns to shoot in the order of Alice-Bob-Carole-Alice-... until only one surviver is left standing. The rule is very simple: ...
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One truthteller, one liar, and two randoms - least questions to identify?
I have landed on a new planet and there are 4 people there. One of them is a truth teller and they always speak the truth. The other is a liar and they always lie. The other 2 are random and they ...
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Two player Monty Hall variation
Alice and Bob are going on a game show as partners. In this game, there are three doors, which contain a car, the car keys, and a goat, which are arranged randomly and secretly behind the doors. Alice ...
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A mix of 2048 and Match 3
I was playing a game and thought of this problem:
Rules
There are 4 distinct tiles on a $6\times6$ grid. The game starts out with one block on the board.
You can shift all the tiles in one of the ...
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Quarter Rolling Die
Quarter rolling a die means triping it on any of the 4 sides adjacent to its base or face in contact with the flat surface. Using the assembled die and quarter chessboard:
You can place and align the ...
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Modifying the puzzle: Cooperative hat-guessing, no mistakes, 3+ colors
Following Guess your hat color, but you don't have to and it's interpretation via Covering codes I tried to create a puzzle with more hat variativity, i.g. 3 types of hats.
4 hats are put on 4 ...
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How do you force a win in 4x4x4 TicTacToe
I have read in the wikipedia page of TicTacToe that it is possible for the first player to force a win in a 4x4x4 board. I tried to find a strategy on how to do it online but failed. So, how do you ...
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Mathematics in adolescence
When I start to teach probabilities, I challenge my students with the following:
Thelma is 16 years old and can only go out at night if one of her parents gives her permission. She knows her father ...
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Topological Nim
You and your friend's new favorite game is "topological nim": You take your favorite compact metric space $X$ and a radius $r$. Each player removes an open disk of radius $r$ from the space ...
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A tournament, and a tight personal schedule
A 64-player binary tournament bracket is about to start. You plan to free up your schedule in advance to watch some of the matchups (meaning, you can plan to watch the second semifinal, for example, ...
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How can they attack?
There are four soldier squads planning to attack a town from the north, south, east, and west at the same time.
They are in their positions; now they just need to know when to attack. One of the ...
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A game of 101 stones—win at (not quite) all costs
In the land of Humilia, a tournament game is played between two players with 101 stones in a pot between them. On each turn, a player may take up to five stones from the pot (and must take at least ...
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Crosswords: Maximum number of words in an n×n grid
What is the maximum number of "words spaces" that can be in an n×n crossword, based on the placement of the shaded squares.
Some limitations
No word can be less than 3 spaces in length
...
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What is this puzzle and what is this solving strategy? [duplicate]
This puzzle is a mini game in an app I recently downloaded. In the game it is referred to as a Mobius Puzzle(after some searching I found referenced as a TwoBik Puzzle). But I cant find any other ...
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Balance the nails
Someone I know handed me this puzzle, I have seen a couple of solutions for it that follow the instructions and don’t involve bending the nails, etc.
Can you figure out how to balance the 6 nails on ...
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Bicoloured 2048
I made a new puzzle game that you can play here. It is a variant of 2048 where there are tiles of two colours. You need to merge tiles of the same colour and value to increase your score. In more ...
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The 15 Pebbles Game
This is a game for 2 players - Each player uses a different coloured marker or pencil, there are 15 pebbles in total.
Players take turns to colour 1, 2 or 3 pebbles (player chooses how many). When all ...
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A Puzzle about "Codeforces Subsequences"
I'm quite intrigued by an "easy" problem in recent Codeforces contest: Codeforces Subsequences.
In this problem, you have to create a string $T$ as shortest as possible such that $S = $ &...
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How many rolls on average to get N dice to all show the same value?
So for example:
if $N = 3$
I roll and get -> $1,2,3$
I re-roll the $2$ and $3$ -> $1,4,4$
I re-roll the $1$ -> $2,4,4$
I re-roll the $2$ -> $4,4,4$
In this case, it ...
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Find a good strategy to survive the multiplayer duel
Alice is involved in a duel with $N$ other opponents. She can choose a gun for herself with any hit probability as she wishes. She also prepares guns for her opponents, whose hit probabilities she can ...
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Battleship puzzle with no clues
Suppose I have a standard Battleship Puzzle, but with no clues (no square uncovered) at the start. Then I'm given 5 "fires" that uncover a square, what would be the best strategy to chose a square to ...
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Based on 9-trains puzzle
Based on this problem, we have got some algorithms that can sort the 9 train cars in a given specific arrangement. But say if the 9 train cars are given in any-arrangement?
Say
ABC
ABC
ABC
...
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Playing the Square Chess
On an ordinary chess board (8x8) without any pieces on it as a starting position, two players will alternately place a pawn on any square (unoccupied) so that the first player that form a square (...
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Simple game of dice - what is the optimal strategy?
The game is pretty simple, whoever reaches 50 first wins, but there are a few important details:
2 players, one die. Players take turns.
Rolled values are simply added up
If you roll a 6, however, ...
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There are 2,001 doors leading to 2,001 hallways. How quickly can you find the way out?
Once again, you have angered the Emperor, and she has imprisoned you in a special prison.
“I do have a bit of good news for you,” the Emperor has told you. “You're only two doors away from freedom, ...
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Is there a strategy for the "2 paths, 1 liar 1 truthful" riddle given an N number of paths, rather than just 2?
I hope this question falls into the correct category. I'm sure the 2 paths , 1 liar and 1 truthful is common, however, is there a general strategy given:
There are N-number of doors/paths/or ...
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A rubik's cube that fights back
After the incidents of Skyfall, 007 remembered a quote Q had said when he was accessing Silva's Omega site :
It's like solving a Rubiks cube that's fighting back.
007, intrigued by this statement, ...
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Find the optimal strategy for this dice game
You are playing a game: You have $6$ standard 6-sided dice that are all rolled at the start of the game. The sum of dice values is your score. Each turn, you can take any (or none) dice and reroll ...
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Five minutes puzzle: Multiway switches
Here's an easy puzzle that should take you only five minutes to solve, inspired by my hallway. Most intuitive answer get the mark:
Six switches control the same light bulb in a multiway switching ...
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TestGameExamination [duplicate]
You are given 10 sets of papers with 10 questions each. Answer to each question is from 1 to 4. You somehow get your hands on the answer sheets and able to memorize each answer (Answer sheets only ...
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Can you guess the lock's passcode? [duplicate]
A lock's passcode is composed of three digits. Five incorrect passcodes are given below, each with a hint to the correct passcode.
2-0-6:
Two of the digits are correct but are in the wrong places.
6-...
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Is there any easy way to solve this lock puzzle?
https://js13kgames.com/games/lock-puzzle/index.html
The link provides an online puzzle game of $16$ tiles in the form of a $4 \times 4$ matrix of which some entries are in the form of vertical tiles ...
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Playing blindfolded 2048
Suppose you are playing many 2048 games, all blindfolded. As usual you can press left, right, down, or up to move the tiles. When there are no more moves the game terminates and you are told your ...
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playing "Coins on a table" against a distracted friend [duplicate]
This puzzle is a follow-up of Coins on a table (warning: the link contains the answer to the original question).
You are playing a game against your friend Alice:
first Alice places one coin on a ...
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Playing with one Queen on a chessboard
Alice and Bob play a special chess game with alternate moves. Alics starts with an empty chessboard and puts a Queen at a field in the first row (A8-H8) or the right column (H1-H8). Now Bob is moving ...
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Four unfair dice
On a table there are four standard six-sided dice with faces numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 each.
Alice starts and chooses a die. Then Bob chooses a die and both throw the dice.
The winner is the person ...
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How could Larry get his friends on a plane without knowing their weights? [duplicate]
This riddle was inspired when I watched the latest (as of this post) episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm (S10E4), in which Larry is faced with a dilemma that he never really solved. The dilemma is as ...
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Two of 18 coins are counterfeit
There are $n=18$ coins, and we know exactly $2$ of them are counterfeit. All counterfeit coins differ from normal coins in weight, but otherwise their weight is not known. They can be heavier or ...
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The Troll, the dwarves and the gloves
A group of $N$ dwarves are caught by an evil Troll. As usual the Troll gives the dwarves a chance to escape if they solve a puzzle he created just for the occasion.
Tomorrow morning each dwarf will ...
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