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Slash and Dash II (Posted on 2003-10-08) Difficulty: 3 of 5
What are the next few rows of this sequence?

/\\
/-\\
/\\\\-/
/\\-\\/
/-\\/\\/\\
/\\\\-//-\\/-\\
/\\-\\-/-\\-/
/-\\\\/\\/\\/\\/
\\/-\\/\\/\\//\\

See The Solution Submitted by Gamer    
Rating: 2.4286 (7 votes)

Comments: ( Back to comment list | You must be logged in to post comments.)
Some Thoughts First Stabs | Comment 1 of 15
I don't know what to make of this, but I thought it might be helpful to look at in a fixed-width font:

/\\
/-\\
/\\\\-/
/\\-\\/
/-\\/\\/\\
/\\\\-//-\\/-\\
/\\-\\-/-\\-/
/-\\\\/\\/\\/\\/
\\/-\\/\\/\\//\\

The first thing I noticed here is that all the backslashes (\) appear in pairs. So, maybe that's just a red herring, and similar to the first slash and dash problem, I'll try replacing the / with ( and \\ with ), and the - with 1, just for kicks.

()
(1)
())1(
()1)(
(1)()()
())1((1)(1)
()1)1(1)1(
(1))()()()(
)(1)()()(()

That seems to be a little better, but still all of the ( ) pairs don't 'close' properly, even between rows. Also, the rows are not steadily increasing in length, as I had thought they might.

Maybe I'll take a step back and use the original form, only replacing \\ with \:

/\
/-\
/\\-/
/\-\/
/-\/\/\
/\\-//-\/-\
/\-\-/-\-/
/-\\/\/\/\/
\/-\/\/\//\

A nice little argyle piece, but still not very useful. Another thing I notice is that are an even number of \s and /s in each row, and they are paired in order (if you ignore the -s for now):

/\
/-\
/\ \-/
/\ - \/
/-\ /\ /\
/\ \-/ /-\ /-\
/\ - \-/ - \-/
/-\ \/ \/ \/ \/
\/ - \/ \/ \/ /\

Also, now, the rows have some kind of increasing order; if you consider /\, \/, /-\, \-/, and - to be separate entities, each row has at least as many of these pieces as the row before it.

I'm assuming the sequence is some representation of a fairly common sequence such as the counting numbers, odd numbers, prime numbers, something like that.

That's as far as I have gotten, though..
  Posted by DJ on 2003-10-08 18:32:20
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