
Bill Gates and Petals Around the Rose (2003) - RKoutnik
http://www.borrett.id.au/computing/petals-bg.htm
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pjungwir
If you want a game where the secret is different each time, you should try
Eleusis:

[http://matuszek.org/eleusis1.html](http://matuszek.org/eleusis1.html)

[http://matuszek.org/eleusis2.html](http://matuszek.org/eleusis2.html)

If you try it, this tip is really important: "Remember that rules are always
much harder than you expect them to be."

And that principle applies to Petals around the Rose too.

~~~
fscherer
really? I found the rule for petals around the rose surprisingly simple (not
to find it but once you know it)

~~~
greatzebu
The tip is for the person coming up with the rule--even rules that seem very
simple will be harder to figure out than you expect.

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coupdejarnac
Petals Around the Rose is a fun game to bring out at techie gatherings, as
many people have not heard of it. A few years ago I was visiting some friends
at Startup Chile, and I decided to entertain four other people with this game.
They were all highly intelligent, though the only one to not solve the problem
is also the most successful among them. Go figure.

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Pfhreak
Interesting puzzle. I had to look up why the name was significant. The
algorithm seemed pretty clear after a few rolls. Upon looking up the puzzle, I
found I had a different algorithm than the one presented as a solution on
wikipedia that resulted in the same output.

Edit: Which made the post's conclusion strange to me, if the name is not
required to understanding the problem, why should Bill's interpretation be so
surprising?

Edit2: Do people have other good examples of puzzles like this? I'm aware of
Zendo [1] which is a similar inductive reasoning game.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zendo_%28game%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zendo_%28game%29)

~~~
ndnichols
I played a similar game with some folks once, but I don't know the game's
name. The person who knew the rule(s) explained that there was a planet that
was like Earth, but it only had a subset of the things that Earth had. We
guessed different things on Earth, and the teacher would tell us whether or
not this other planet had them.

Some samples include: Planet has apples, green grass, trees, runners, and
cheese pizza. Planet does not have bananas, plants, people, hamburgers, cats,
dogs, houses.

I won't put the rule(s) here in case people want to try it.

~~~
dpark
Planet has summer but not winter, and fall but but not spring, right?

~~~
ndnichols
Yup! I remember my eighteen-year old self being pleased with "Planet does not
have Audi, but it does have Audi TTs!"

Looking at it again, I think the game works better spoken than written out
like this.

~~~
dpark
Probably so. Written makes it a lot more obvious.

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jamesfisher
I quickly hit on the correct theory based on the name of the game, but
dismissed it, because the secret rule does not correctly match the name. The
problem is pointed out on Wikipedia [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Petals_Around_the_Rose#DE...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Petals_Around_the_Rose#DEFECTIVE_puzzle_description)

~~~
Avshalom
Jr bayl pner nobhg gur crgnyf .Lur fvatyr cvc bs n bar vf n ebfr jvgu ab
crgnyf, guhf pbhagf nf mreb.

~~~
soperj
that's all well and good, but why rot13 your post?

nm, for spoilers. Makes sense.

