What's New - April, 2010
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April 7, 2010: Six of a Kind is a program to analyze a game that requires six rolled dice to all show the same value in order to win. A viewer's inquiry prompted this program to find out if $1,000 for a win was a fair payout if his club charged $1 to play 3 games. Just for fun, we also analyze the odds of winning for a few additional variations.
April 10, 2010:
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| X = target hole for final peg |
Peg Solitaire is a peg jumping game with each jumped peg
removed. The typical objective is to leave one final peg in the center of
the board. A viewer recently asked for help solving two puzzles
which require that the final peg be in an off center location,
Peg Solitaire Version 4 allows the
final peg location to be specified and also adds the ability to save and reload
customized puzzles.
April 14, 2010: A quick little program from our Mensa Page-A-Day Puzzle Calendar. Executive Bathroom added to the Beginners page in Delphi Techniques section finds all 3 digit odd integers without repeated digits which could be the combination to the bathroom. The search loop has about 15 lines of code. I also displayed the neat Mensa Calendar derivation of the solution. It demonstrates the impact of the right approach to solving a problem.
April 21, 2010: My Water Jugs program has been a fun one to work on. The prior versions solved "Closed" water jug puzzles in which the initial water amount remains constant but must be redistributed across the jugs to meet a given configuration. While researching these problems, I realized that there is another "Open" form of the puzzle where, in addition to jug to jug pouring, water may enter or leave the system by filling or emptying jugs. A classic version which appeared in a "Die Hard" movie, requires that 4 gallons of water be obtained given a water fountain and two jars which will hold 3 and 5 gallons. Water Jugs Version 4 posted today adds ability to define and solve this and similar problems.
April 25, 2010:
Another minor change today to fix a problem that has bugged me
for a long time. For program WordStuff2,
when entering a partial word to be analyzed in "Word Completion" or letters to
be analyzed in "Unscramble" it had been necessary to switch from keying to a
mouse click on the Search button to find solutions. Now, pressing the
"Enter" key also triggers the search. Much better!