Have a guess at this.

First of all imagine one of those toys for babies - three rings going down in size that fit over a tapered peg.

Reight, you've got three pegs with three rings on one of them, biggest at the bottom, smallest on top. You have to move the rings one at a time to another peg ending up again with the biggest at the bottom and the smallest at the top. You can never have a bigger one on top of a smaller one. It's possible in a few moves (about 12 I think.)

Now then, when you do it with four rings it takes a few more moves, five obviously more and so on. There's a mathematical formula for how many moves it takes each time.

So here's the question. Assuming that it takes one second to move one ring how long would it take if there were 64 rings?

A pint for the nearest.

 

I'm miles away, I'll never get a pint under those rules.

 

2 parts Bicarbonate of Soda to one part Quinine.

 

Go on, have a guess. If you get somewhere between 10% and 900% of the answer I'll pay you one on by credit card.

 

Come on y'bas

tard. Have a go.

 

RE: Come on y'bas

96 seconds. I dunno

 

Wrong.

1.76 tuna x Notts County.

In a tincture.

 

My head hurts

 

It takes 7 moves to finish the three ring and three peg problem.</p>

How many pegs are you using for the 64 ring version?</p>

 

64 rings, 3 pegs.

 

RE: My head hurts

The puzzle is called the towers of hanoi. It should be familar to anyone who has studied computing/software. You can write a solution in about 3 lines of prolog or lisp. However I have tried my best to blank this from my memory, so I have no idea how to do it.

Errr, 4 days?

 

RE: My head hurts

Also familiar to anyone who has studied psychology.

 

129

 

584942417355 years, give or a take a day or two?

 

RE: 64 rings, 3 pegs.

Is it what mathematicians would call 64! (factorial.)

1 x 2 x 3 x.... 63x 64.

 

18446744073709551615 seconds?

 

18446744099999999999

The formula is...</p>

2(to the power of n) -1</p>

18446744099999999999</p>

 

it doubles every time. I watched Mind Games too.

 

2^64-1 seconds

 

As a rough guess

I'm going to say that the answer lies somewhere between the top of this thread and the bottom of it.

You do the maths.

virtual pint will be fine thanks