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Dragon Hunting (Posted on 2004-12-10) Difficulty: 3 of 5
Prince Valiant went to fight a 3-headed, 3-tailed dragon.

He has a magic sword that can, in one stroke, chop off either one head, two heads, one tail, or two tails.

This dragon is of a type related to the hydra; if one head is chopped off, a new head grows. In place of one tail, two new tails grow; in place of two tails, one new head grows; if two heads are chopped off, nothing grows.

What is the smallest number of strokes required to chop off all the dragon's heads and tails, thus killing it?

See The Solution Submitted by SilverKnight    
Rating: 3.7778 (9 votes)

Comments: ( Back to comment list | You must be logged in to post comments.)
Hints/Tips re: A Solution | Comment 24 of 37 |
(In reply to A Solution by Dustin)

i think its 9 chopping

why? because the last thing to do is to chop 2 heads...its the only way to eliminate both heads and tails. so the heads must be even before we can do it. chop 1 head is useless. the first step is to chop 1 tail or 2 tails. to eliminate tails we must make the tail even ( 2, 4, 6, ...) in condition amount of tail divided by 2 is odd because we just need odd amount to make amount of heads even.  so we need to chop one tail 3 times, two tail 3 times, and two heads 3 times.  


  Posted by anton on 2004-12-17 17:19:16
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