From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2007-04-16T20:48:14+09:00
Subject: Re: Magic Fingers (#120) [solution]

On Apr 15, 2007, at 3:40 PM, Eric I. wrote:

> On Apr 15, 3:49 pm, James Edward Gray II <j...@grayproductions.net>
> wrote:
>> On Apr 15, 2007, at 9:00 AM, Eric I. wrote:
>>
>>> Note that the initial state, where all hands have one finger,  
>>> does not
>>> have a guaranteed win by either player.  So if both players play
>>> perfectly, the game will never end.
>>
>> Wikipedia disagrees with this, which likely just means that I botched
>> my explanation of the rules somehow.  I'm see if I can figure out
>> what I changed...
>>
>> James Edward Gray II
>
> I just read the Wikipedia description as a result of reading your
> comment.  And as I read through the rules there, one difference did
> jump out at me.  The rules disallow a clap where you start out with 3
> on left and 1 on right and end up with 1 on left and three on right.
> My code does not disallow that.

Sorry, yesterday was a busy day for me and I just got around to  
looking into this.  Thanks for looking into this for me.

Yes, this is the rule I didn't express in the quiz description.  I  
knew about it and just failed to state it correctly.  For the record,  
the missing rule is:

A clap must result in a change in finger counts.  Just switching the  
counts of the left and right hands is not allowed.

James Edward Gray II