# the little half (another Le Monde puzzle)

October 27, 2012
By

(This article was first published on Xi'an's Og » R, and kindly contributed to R-bloggers)

I found this Le Monde puzzle of June 16 I had stored and then somehow forgotten with my trips to Japan and Australia: There are n beans in a box, with 98≤n≤102). Two players take at each round either one bean from the box or “the little half” (i.e. the integral part of the half) of the remaining beans. The player remaining with a single bean to pick has lost. What is the value of n for which there exists no winning strategy for the second player? Now the R resolution is rather easy: Player 1 wins with n beans if Player 2 loses with either (n-1) or [n/2] beans. This leads to a straightforward recursive function

solve=function(n){
if (n<4){
solve=(n>1)}else{
solve=(!(solve(n-1)))&&(!solve(trunc(n/2)))}
solve}


as it is possible to win with 2 or 3 beans, providing the answer to the puzzle:

> solve(98)
[1] TRUE
> solve(99)
[1] FALSE
> solve(100)
[1] FALSE
> solve(101)
[1] FALSE
> solve(102)
[1] TRUE


if not an explanation!

Filed under: Kids, R Tagged: Le Monde, mathematical puzzle, R, recursive function

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