What's New -  September, 2007

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September 24, 2007:  Cows and Bulls posted today is a game which is similar to, but predates, Pressman Toy Company's "Mastermind" game.   In Mastermind, a "Hider" defines a hidden pattern of colored pegs which the the "Seeker" attempts to find  by making successive guesses with feedback after each guess.  In Cows and Bulls, the pegs are replaced by the digits 0-9 and the feedback consists of the number of guess digits which appear in their proper place in the hidden number (these are the Bulls), and the number of digits which appear in the hidden pattern but are in the wrong position (the Cows).    The program posted today, like my earlier Mastermind program allows either the human or the program to be the Hider or the Seeker.

 

B1 is one of the 32 ending positions for tours starting in A1

September 14, 2007:   A few weeks ago a viewer asked if there was a knight's tour for each starting and ending combination on an 8x8 chessboard.  A new Knight's Tour program AllKnightsTours was posted today.  It finds a sample of all 2048 valid combinations of starting and ending tour locations.

 A Knight's Tour is a sequence of knight moves that visits every square on the board.   There are 64 starting locations with 32 ending locations for each (those of opposite color).  64x32=2048.   
 

September 1, 2007:  In the ongoing search for a winning strategy for the Hounds, Fox and Hounds Version 2.3 posted today allows the user to select who moves first.  Perhaps being able to have the first move is just the advantage that they need!