Path: news.net.uni-c.dk!howland.erols.net!newshub2.home.com!news.home.com!news1.rdc2.pa.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3AABDED3.951B59E0@Home.Com> From: David Ness Organization: Mind/Matter X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (WinNT; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets,comp.lang.apl,comp.lang.awk,comp.lang.basic,comp.lang.beta,comp.lang.cobol,comp.lang.dylan,comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Einstein's Riddle References: <3AABD82E.C4D4E5CB@Home.Com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 27 Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 20:23:37 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.3.108.59 X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news1.rdc2.pa.home.com 984342217 24.3.108.59 (Sun, 11 Mar 2001 12:23:37 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 12:23:37 PST Xref: news.net.uni-c.dk comp.ai.neural-nets:67513 comp.lang.apl:29356 comp.lang.awk:17083 comp.lang.beta:12731 comp.lang.cobol:102467 comp.lang.dylan:24140 comp.lang.forth:78479 Steve Graham wrote: > > David, > > I'm surprised at the remark. This puzzle strikes me as much more complex, > and it will utilize some of the same techniques as the other one: > Backtracking, constraints. > > Steve > We all differ. I find this category of puzzle _very_ simple. I have done hundreds (perhaps thousands) of them over the years and in general the significant problems are always involved in the `interpretation' of the English used in specifying the conditions. In general once that is exposed and modeled there isn't anything very challenging left in the puzzle. A clue that this is the case is found in the fact that the item mentioned in the final question is never mentioned elsewhere---thus indicating a kind of `word-cleverness' is at the core. Added to this, the search space of the puzzles is often 5^5 or 6^6, and therefore wouldn't represent much of of a challenge, or much room for particular algorithms to distinguish themselves were one to treat the problem computationally. Of course, YMMV. It isn't my job to discourage or encourage others. All I can say is: (a) I don't find the category interesting; and (b) will be surprised if anything interesting results should others tackle it.