I wasn't on the mailing list, but somebody forwarded to me Doug Orleans's question about my state diagram for Treehouse. Yes, the numbers represent number of ways to get from one state to another. So for example, from state 1 (all pieces in a single stack), there are two distinct hops that will take you to state 2b (all pieces upright, in two stacks). If there's more than one type of move that would do it, I just added those up; there are three swaps and a hop that go from 2b to another 2b position, so I wrote 4. I have the more detailed breakdown, but it didn't seem as useful, and I couldn't see how to incorporate it into the diagram. This is in no way intended to be an exhaustive analysis; it's more that I got curious and threw it together. I am now on the list and will see any replies. -- Dan Knapp |