Sunday Times Teaser 3196 – Mind The Edge
by Mark Valentine
Published Friday December 22 2023 (link)
Kate and Lucy play a pub game on an isosceles triangle table top. They take turns to push a penny from the centre of the table top’s base towards the triangle’s apex, 120cm distant, scoring the sum of their distances from the base, or zero if it ever falls off the table.
Each player aims to maximise their distance, avoiding the chance that the penny might fall off the table. Their penny has an equal chance of landing anywhere within an error radius around the aimed point. This radius is proportional to the distance aimed. As a skilled player Lucy’s error ratio is half of Kate’s.
They both expect to score a whole number of cm per push, but to give each an equal chance of winning Kate gets one more push than Lucy. This number of pushes is the largest possible, given the above information.
How many pushes complete a game between the two?
A version of your program with only one loop.
I still am not sure about the definition of “error ratio”.
Brian
The Gap was originally an Edge. A dangerous Freudian slip perhaps?
HI Tony, When I first read your comment I thought it was a comment on my code and only later realised is was on the teaser text!
Thanks for alerting me to my change of the puzzle name.
I have no idea at what stage ‘Edge’ got changed to ‘Gap’ but it happened at some point in in the three teaser posts that I do every Friday, this one being somewhat rushed as a result of the arrival of the family for Christmas.