I’m sure you know that on general board’s it’s NP-complete. On one-dimensional boards (which most children would probably find boring) it’s in P (see a paper by David Eppstein and me). My favorite thing to do was play it backwards… you can also do a two-player version where the first person to get stuck loses. - Cris
On Mar 14, 2020, at 11:53 AM, James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
I bought a vintage Hi-Q set for my family a few weeks ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peg_solitaire
Now that I'll be spending lots of time at home with my kids, I'm thinking that there should be some good activities we could do with it.
Any ideas?
I know that Berlekamp-Conway-Guy has a section on this, and maybe it even explains how to win, but I don't want to just see the answer; I'd like a "curriculum" that'll Socratically guide me and my kids towards the solution. (Or is it the sort of puzzle where you basically need to use a brute-force approach?)
I kind of like the fact that I don't know the solution; it puts me and my kids more on the same level.
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