Pondering Solutions to the King Snake Puzzle
An Adventure in Discrete Mathematics
by
Book Details
About the Book
Plan of Attack
- For 10 steps in assembling the 27-cube snake puzzle, see Appendix 1. If the terms are puzzling, too, look them up in the Glossary, Appendix 7.
- For 26 steps in assembling the 64-cube King Snake Puzzle, see pages 7-8 in section 3.6 “The Puzzler with the Puzzle on His Hands”, and see Appendix 3, pages 4-5
- Computer Programmer? See “Harry”, the Visual Basic macro that generates paths of solution to the King Snake Puzzle. Harry’s logic is described, and his source code listing is presented in Appendix 6, “All About Harry”.
- To indulge in the labyrinth of the whole of the titillating adventure, jump in at page 1, section 1.0 “The Challenge”. See the development of discrete algorithms that (1) generate and examine Harry’s 192 paths of solution, (2) identify similarities and differences among the 192 paths, and (3) group the paths into families of 24 siblings.
- For a succinct summary of the adventure see page 15, section 5.0 “Finale, Digital vs. Physical” where the mystery of the King Snake Puzzle is revealed.
About the Author
One Sunday afternoon in 1947, in a Chinese restaurant in Jacksonville, Florida, Ms. Starbuck was given the little wooden elephant puzzle. She has been attracted to take apart/put-together puzzles since that time. Her current favorites are the six-piece burr, Stewart Coffin’s “Three-piece Block,” and the snake puzzles, the 27-cube snake as well as the 64-cube.
Ms. Starbuck’s formal studies include Mathematics at Florida State University, B.A. 1958, and Computer Science in the School of Engineering at U.C.L.A., 1968-1970.
In 1959, Ms. Starbuck went to work for the System Development Corporation* in Santa Monica, California, with the job title “Computer Programmer”. Her first computer was the AN/FSQ-7,* an “automatic” device in the SAGE* system (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment*). She spent the whole of her professional career developing software systems, primarily for agencies of the Federal Government.
Shortly after Ms. Starbuck went to work in Santa Monica, she wrote to a school buddy whom she had left back home in Florida, “Come work with me. Come help us build this software system. It’s like solving puzzles all day.”
To contact Ms. Starbuck, send e-mail to CuriousPuzzler@outlook.com.