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Myrna Larson
 
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Default Critical thinking puzzle

PS: using Google to look for Norwegian and camel and juice and Kool, I found
that this seems to be a variant of a "standard" programming problem called the
Zebra Puzzle. That puzzle, which specifies a different set of rules, has only
one solution.

On Sun, 11 Dec 2005 23:00:51 -0600, Myrna Larson
wrote:

Since posting my original message, I wrote a macro to do it, and came up with
the same 2 solutions I had discovered manually (which was reassuring!). Of
course the macro found the solutions in less than 1 second (not counting
programming time) vs an hour or so that I spent doing it the "old fashioned"
way.

Now that we've spent all of this time on it, the OP will probably come back
and tell us that one or more of the other conditions were stated incorrectly
:(. But we have the macros written, so making a change will be trivial.

Actually, I expect the problem is supposed to have only one solution, which
means there is an error somewhere in the "specs".

Has the OP been heard from since, or are we just talking to ourselves?

On Sun, 11 Dec 2005 21:17:56 -0500, "Dana DeLouis"
wrote:

OTOH, if I interpret it to mean there are ONE OR MORE houses between the
giraffe and elephant, and one of them is blue, I also came up with 2
solutions.


Ahhh! Thank you Myrna. You are absolutely correct.
If I change that line in my program, I also get two solutions.
Thanks. :)

 
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