help me solve this puzzle

aesir

I got this in an e-mail from my dad and I cant solve it. Apparently its a puzzle for 2nd graders in China. Seeing that Im in college, I feel rather dumb.

Can anyone help out?

http://stwww.weizmann.ac.il/G-CS/BENARI/files/frogs.swf

Kaputa

Not to be unhelpful, but having someone else solve it for you won't exactly help you feel less dumb.

Apothe0sis

I'm strongly of the oipinion that you've been played, as as far as I can see you block yourself off within 3 moves. I sphinx it impossibleh.

B:L

Apothe0sis wrote: »

I'm strongly of the oipinion that you've been played, as as far as I can see you block yourself off within 3 moves. I sphinx it impossibleh.

Really?

RULES OF THE GAME:

1. Any frog can move forward by leaping.
2. Any frog can move forward one step.
3. No frog can move back.

Messing with it now.

drinkinstout

I got it

Kaputa

Apothe0sis wrote: »

I'm strongly of the oipinion that you've been played, as as far as I can see you block yourself off within 3 moves. I sphinx it impossibleh.

I haven't solved it yet, but you can definitely make it more than 3 moves in.

Dance Commander

It is solveable.

drinkinstout

both kinds can leap...

boy 1
girl 1
girl 2
boy 1
boy 2
boy 3
girl 1
girl 2
girl 3
boy 1
boy 2
boy 3
girl 2
girl 3
boy 3

smokmnky

took me a minute but i got it.

B:L

Parabens! Clique para reinciar.

embrik

Sweet. I remember writing a C++ app that did this back in the day. I think it was called 7 asterisks or something. All text based. I remember that by the end of that project, I could solve it with my eyes closed. Ah, memories.

Marc C.

First of all, when you receive something like this in an e-mail, the part about 2nd graders in China is most likely false. The goal is to make you feel stupid. So, don't sweat it.

As for the actual solution, I'll give you a tip: try to get the frogs like this: empty stone, male, female, male, female, male, female.

Kaputa

Fuck yeah!

That was more challenging than I expected it to be.

Apothe0sis

D'oh.

tech_hunter

I got it quite easily dont know what your problem is.

Bama

Just think about whether or not the move you're considering results in a block and don't forget that you can move a piece forward without jumping over another and you'll get it eventually; there are only a finite number of moves and it's not many.

Sentry

You can never have two frogs facing the same way back to back... not until the very end.

Honestly, a little trial and error should have made this puzzle very easy.

Szechuanosaurus

Does 'Parabens! Clique para reiniciar' mean I got it right?

I got all the lady frogs to the left and all the gentleman frogs to the right.

If that's the goal, I got it first time.

Spawnbroker

Yeah I've seen this before. Now imagine instead of a computer program with 3 on each side, having to do it in real life with 5 people on each side. Ever tried to get 10 teenagers to shut up long enough to get a word in? Yeah...

CangoFett

Yeah, we did it in my PE class with 4 kids on teach side. Took us like an hour

Lucky Cynic

I got it in a decent 15min. Fun stuff and I'm sure whatever puzzles there are, you can solve them all with a bit of deep though. If you fancy Puzzles, I reccomend getting into Perplex City.

Nozz

Math Quest had some puzzles that were miles ahead of this one, and I had that game completed in grade 3...

Mr_Grinch

15 mins for some people? It just took literally 3! A little fore-thought about what each move will do and what moves are bad works great.

Æthelred

This is a really old puzzle and it usually has 5 either side. If you can't do this within a minute or so then you may have problems.

15 moves is the quickest, as drinkinstout has it.

Janson

Æthelred wrote: »

This is a really old puzzle and it usually has 5 either side. If you can't do this within a minute or so then you may have problems.

15 moves is the quickest, as drinkinstout has it.

Not problems, people who don't usually think logically or aren't used to solving logic problems will struggle with it.

It's one of those 'you can or you can't' situations - much like how some people will always be completely clueless when it comes to technology, no matter how carefully and slowly you try to explain things to them.

Æthelred

'Tisn't really much of a logic problem though. You just click frogs. :P I wouldn't be surprised if it's for second graders; although it's an Israeli site, not Chinese.

zhen_rogue

I misunderstood the intent of the game at first.

I thought the goal was to get a boy and a girl facing each other, as if kissing.
So the end result was 3 pairs of frogs, 1 of each sex per pair, facing each other.

EDIT: Solved, heh.

Bama

That's actually much easier than the real puzzle.

naporeon

I solved it moving the boy frongs first, and then tried to solve it in reverse.

I found this very interesting, because it took me almost twice as long, even though I'd already solved the puzzle in the other direction.

The brain is a funny thing.

naporeon

zhen_rogue wrote: »

I misunderstood the intent of the game at first.

I thought the goal was to get a boy and a girl facing each other, as if kissing.
So the end result was 3 pairs of frogs, 1 of each sex per pair, facing each other.

EDIT: Solved, heh.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that you have to go through a point in the solving of this puzzle where they are, in fact, lined up in alternating boy-girl fashion.

Thanatos

naporeon wrote: »

zhen_rogue wrote: »

I misunderstood the intent of the game at first.

I thought the goal was to get a boy and a girl facing each other, as if kissing.
So the end result was 3 pairs of frogs, 1 of each sex per pair, facing each other.

EDIT: Solved, heh.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that you have to go through a point in the solving of this puzzle where they are, in fact, lined up in alternating boy-girl fashion.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I did.

The key is to figure out under what conditions you've automatically lost (i.e. anytime you've got three frogs of two different colors in a row, with at least two of the same color next to each other) and just avoid that particular situation.

Doing that, I got it on my second try.