Posted by dorayme on 07/09/07 23:19

In article
<Xns99685A33A6182nanopandaneredbojias@198.186.190.161>,
Neredbojias <neredbojias@gmail.com> wrote:

> Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Mon, 09 Jul 2007 09:54:15
> GMT dorayme scribed:
>
> >> I was under the assumption you didn't want numbers to that puzzler
> >> posted, but okay. 2000. Probably isn't optimal.
> >
> > What a nice round figure and neat where it is, 2 x 1000! No...
> > you won't solve quickly, it takes some persistence and the real
> > worth in all this is not the mere figure but the approach to it.
> > How it must be reasoned with... (now I am reminded of a line in
> > Pride and Prejudice where Elizabeth is besides herself over
> > Wickam's elopement with her 16 year old sister. He is a bit of a
> > scoundrel and she blurts out to her sister Jane, "How is a man
> > like that to be reasoned with?" The desert is like that, but
> > there is a way, and a more honourable one than the way Wickham
> > had to be dealt with.
>
> So all that means exactly what with regard to my number?

It means that your figure is wrong, either because it is
impossible to cross the desert in so low a mileage (you make an
error in your reasoning if you did not simply pluck a number off
a shelf - see my previous post on this) or so high a figure (you
simply gave up before considering deeper issues).

Now, if you do not understand these last remarks of mine, it is a
safe bet you will never solve the more complicated problem of
understanding the logistics involved in the desert. So, for now,
I want you to concentrate heavily on these last remarks of mine.
Loll them about in that xenophobic, sexist, javascript loving
brain of yours.

Now there is a thought, Boji! Javascript. You could cheat and
write a program to get the result or very close to it. You know,
I used to solve problems like this in Basic when I worked my SE
and SE30. It was a lot of fun. I "solved" some of the other bin
Hassad puzzles this way. You make a model suitable for a program
and run it. I did that successfully, if I recall, with

<http://members.optushome.com.au/droovies/binHassad/theMoving8.htm
l>

and I think with

<http://members.optushome.com.au/droovies/binHassad/camelSkinTrade
r.html>

But the desert would be trickier to program for. However,
personal computers are pretty powerful these days and you might
get something half sensible by sheer number crunching. (That is
basically what chess computers do - or did... they are getting
smarter I hear)

--
dorayme

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