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        riddles >> hard >> Re: Gnome Hair Counting
        
(Message started by: mikedagr8 on Aug 13^th, 2007, 4:02am)

Title: Re: Gnome Hair Counting
Post by mikedagr8 on Aug 13^th, 2007, 4:02am

Get the trees to organise it. I mean if they are real walking, talking gnomes, there must be the equivalent for trees. ::)

Seriously though hasn't Martin Gardner discussed this somewhere, because i have heard something similar in one of his books ???

Title: Re: Gnome Hair Counting
Post by towr on Aug 13^th, 2007, 4:13am

It's on the this site in the guise of kabouters wearing different coloured hats.

That's the problem with finding a puzzle on the net, it can be reworded in a hundred different ways.

[hide]Start with an empty row.
Every next gnome inserts himself in the row between two gnomes with a different hair colour if possible. Or on the left otherwise.
At the end, the rightmost gnome from the row leaves the row, then joins the row again as if he was the next. The whole section of the row from where he stands to where he stood has his hair colour,t he rest has the other hair colour.[/hide]

Something to that effect, anyway.

[hide]You can speed it up exponentially by doing it for small groups first, then treat each sorted group as a single gnome (or send one gnome from each group as representative)[/hide]