Comments on: The Weekend Links

By: Bicycle Bill

Bicycle Bill — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 09:17:59 +0000

The Prediction is just a simple magician’s force. David Copperfield has done similar ‘tricks’ on his TV specials. This guy just stretched it out longer by removing only one symbol at a time.

reCaptcha: an expensive horse
($200-Million chevaux)

By: Bicycle Bill

Bicycle Bill — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 09:17:24 +0000

The Predictions is just a simple magician’s force. David Copperfield has done similar ‘tricks’ on his TV specials. This guy just stretched it out longer by removing only one symbol at a time.

reCaptcha: an expensive horse
($200-Million chevaux)

By: anomdebus

anomdebus — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:54:24 +0000

The first link has to do with eliminating squares where it is impossible to land based on the number given.
For the first iteration (after the jump of 1), you are given an odd number, yet it takes an even number of hops to get to the house and any loop from the house to itself is also even. So you can’t land on the house according to the rules even if you wanted to.
To generalize, there appears to be an X and a diamond. If you are on the X and get an odd number, you end up on the diamond.
He picks only odd numbers, so you switch between the two sets of squares and picks a square from the shape you just left. There is some strategy in allowing valid moves to continue, like water evaporating in a puddle. But other than that very simple.

Here is a map of what I was talking about X and diamond (d==diamond)
XdX
dXd
XdX