Vietnamese snake puzzle - Closed

[Gerson W. Barbosa]

(05-22-2015 10:21 PM)Tugdual Wrote:  Problem is hat your assumption c==1 is not valid. You really need to consider the 2 fractions as a whole instead of 2 individual fractions that deliver integers.

Hi, Tugdual,

It was more a choice rather than an assumption. Since this problem was set up for eight-year old children, or so they say, I thought solutions involving fractional intermediate results might have been avoided. In that case, 'c' has necessarily to be 1. Also, I was only interested in finding at least one solution -- and this can be done by hand. Of course, the more complex problem of finding all possible solutions does require a calculating device, better if the task is accomplished in an elegant and compact fashion like you did.

Years ago, Karl Schneiner posted another interesting problem involving nine digits without repetions and fractions:

http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/...ead=112157

But please ignore my ugly brute force attemps there, except perhaps the Monte-Carlo approach at the end, despite it being extremely inefficient.

Gerson.