

Alligator Eggs - tumult
http://worrydream.com/AlligatorEggs/

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tumult
I thought this was great fun when I stumbled on it, so if any discussions pick
up, hopefully you will read the linked article first and enjoy the surprise :]

~~~
iigs
In the interest of what you say I decided not to spoil it with my comment. I
will however, say the following things:

1) When I hit the surprise "my mind was blown", to use a phrase popular
elsewhere on the internet.

2) I still don't have a snowball's chance in hell of understanding it. :)

~~~
whacked_new
I was a bit confused when solving the puzzle. It would have been clearer if he
wrote that the game is over when nobody has anything to eat. This is implied.
The other clarification he could have made was that if an alligator eats a
family but itself has no eggs, the alligator simply dies and disappears.

The color changing rule is also a bit clumsy. If I were a kid I would wonder
if the two question marks are the same kind in that puzzle. In fact, they may
or may not be the same, but appearance wise they look the same.

Hope that helps with anyone who decided to sit down and figure out the puzzle
on paper.

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cubicle67
This guy (Bret Victor) also wrote an excellent essay a few years back, Magic
Ink <http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/>

Every now and then, probably about twice a year, I come across something so
good I print it out and keep it. This is one of those essays.

~~~
rms
You should submit that

~~~
cubicle67
Thanks. It's now here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=600799>

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kajecounterhack
This was brilliant. Now all we need is an entrepreneurial guy to come along
and actually make/market it. I'd be the first customer!

~~~
ComputerGuru
And only :P

It's waaaaaaaay too complicated for mass-market!

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TheSOB88
Just teach lambda calculus and get it over with. That stuff's awesome without
having to bring in scaly beings. Dealing with these inane pictures just adds
too much overhead. I remember when we were learning about these in class - I
was so confused about the ambiguities in the alligator representation, but
everything became clear once we switched to mathematical notation. I'm quite
convinced I would have learned it perfectly fine without these images.

This is a big problem with education today, IMO - trying to make everything
'fun' by dumbing it down and giving it pictures. Even college textbooks have
started talking to me as if I were an 8-year-old. I prefer the converse - when
I was 8, reading high school textbooks from the decade prior. I didn't
understand much, but it was still quite interesting.

