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Re: navigation riddle



Quoting "RAUBER, JOEL" <Joel.Rauber@SDSTATE.EDU>:

|
| It is amusing to muse about what gives this puzzle its
| zest.
|
| We note that the solution-set is non-compact. That is,
| the southern solutions are spectacularly different from
| the northern solution.
|
| It seems that as a general rule, knowing one solution
| forms some sort of psychological impediment to finding
| other solutions. The mind is attracted to the first
| solution like a moth to candle.

If you are old enough, the question is more or less identical to a
widely spread set of riddles that were spread around in the seventies.
And the description of the problem was followed by the question: What
color are the bears?

This adds further impediment to thinking of the southern hemisphere
solution set.

Joel R


Is the impediment that there are no polar bears in Antarctica?:) Whatever, I
was interested in what John said about how we know when we have the whole
solution set when a problem may not easily reduce to a mathematically solvable
form. Like he said when setting the riddle, you have to think outside the
square, then maybe think outside the square beyond that.