There are some poles, and on the first pole are some rings, each a different size. The sizes of the rings increases from the top to the bottom of the pole. The only allowable move is to take the top ring from any pole and place onto another pole. You cannot place a ring on top of another ring unless the other ring is exactly one size bigger. You can make as many moves as you like.

Your goal is to move all the rings onto the second pole, in the same order. What is the highest number of rings that can be moved when there are N poles? How can you move this many rings?

To move ring n, you need to move ring n-1 to a different pole first. The only place ring n-1 can go is an empty pole or the pole where ring n is (because a ring can only be put on top of a ring that is exactly one size bigger).

So to move n rings, you will need n poles

Posted by Jurgen on 2005-05-05 18:22:31