Ricochet Robot 1.0 - Solution
In Ricochet Robot players compete to move Robots around the board. A token is revealed that matches a special square on the board. Players then compete to see who can move the matching color robot to that square in as few moves as possible. Robots can be moved in any of the four directions (up, down, left or right) but the problem is that once they start moving they continue until they hit a wall, the edge of the board or another robot!
eg. One way to get the Green robot home would be: Red down, Green right, Green up, Green left for a total of 4 moves.
The problem this month is a little different: Instead of getting a single robot to its home you must get all robots home! (If you can't see the whole board try setting your browser to full screen.)
If there's one constant in the Universe its that no matter how clever you are there's always someone who's cleverer. When I created the above puzzle I wanted it to require some strange or interesting moves. The simple, fairly basic "solution" to the above was supposed to be 17 moves. The "real" solution I had come up with required only 16 and so I thought that I'd catch a few people. Well, within a few hours of posting it I'd already received a 15 move solution and a few minutes later one requiring only 14! (The contests ultimate solution). More aggravating than the fact that I didn't see this was that it wasn't a particularly "pretty" move. For the most part its move the Red robot home, then the Blue, then the Yellow and finally the Green. I had hoped that it would require a much more "interlocking" strategy. Oh well, here it is:
- Yellow left
- Red up
- Red left
- Red down (Home)
- Yellow down
- Blue left
- Blue down
- Blue right (Home)
- Green right
- Yellow right
- Yellow up
- Yellow left (Home)
- Green up
- Green left (Home)
There were several folks that got a very similar 15 move solution that involved moving the Blue robot one extra move. In any case there were many respondents with the correct solution so a random draw was use to determine the winners. The lucky recipients of the silver robots are:
Daniel Wakabayashi
Jon Grimm
So what was my intended solution? Well, I've already given away that the answer is 16 but I've slightly modified the problem to prevent the above solution without affect the one I came up with. Have a look: Ricochet Robot 1.1
- Greg Aleknevicus
