Looking for a riddle? Want a mental challenge to share with your friends? If you answered yes to both, then the folks at TED-Ed have a new brain teaser perfect for you: The Riddle of the Trojans. The first step is to dive into the mythology of the Trojan War, with gods and humans completely exhausted after 10 years of fighting. Thanks to a stroke of fate, you have the chance to end the conflict, but first you must protect a delicate truce…
(Ed. note: I recommend pausing before the solutions and continuing with the text below. At the time of writing, there are no subtitles in Spanish.)
The Riddle of the Trojans
Today we have a short story, or rather, a riddle. The ten years of conflict have exhausted gods and humans alike, but the technical tie remains. Fortunately, a divine omen crosses the sky, and both sides agree to a ten-day truce. That's your chance! When you visit the Moirai, you discover the key to ending the war: Peace must last ten full days. If the truce is broken early, blood will flow for ten more years.
But the story doesn't end there. The Moirai also share the exact conditions to ensure the truce lasts: The Greek and Trojan camps are arranged on a grid (see the two photos below).
- The first condition is that Greek soldiers must be able to move from one camp to another without crossing a Trojan camp, and the same rule applies to the Trojans.
- The second condition is that they cannot move diagonally.
- The third condition is that all camps on both sides must be connected, and there can be no "isolated" camps, so to speak.
The problem… is that the camps look like this:
And as if that weren't enough, your powers have limits. You have the strength to move up to a maximum of six pairs of camps horizontally, vertically, and/or diagonally… but each camp can only be moved once. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to discover the exact moves to reorganize the camps, meet the Moirai's conditions, guarantee the truce, and end the Trojan War. Good luck!
(Solutions below: 3, 2, 1...)
Why 'solutions'? Because there's a catch: The riddles are actually two. The first phase has about 15 solutions, and they consist of "attacking" three of the Trojan arms, while we remove the Greek camp from the center. However, the war also involves the gods, and on the fifth day of the truce, Ares convinces one of the Trojan camps to make a move vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.
Back to the Moirai, they confirm that the Trojan camp loyal to Ares is within the four arms on the perimeter of the battlefield, but there's more: The camp will not make any move if it only breaks connectivity with the Trojan camps, since the idea is to interfere with the Greeks. Finally, the Moirai grant you two more moves, following the previous rules. What is the new solution?
The conditions seem complicated, but it's actually a trick: Only two of the Trojan 'arms' would initially be ready to make that move. With the two additional steps granted by the Moirai, you can move two of the camps inward, eliminating any chance of blockage. There's also another solution that lets you save one move. Can you discover it?
Yes, the Riddle of the Trojans is extremely visual, and it's hard to describe in text. The folks at TED-Ed haven't published subtitles in Spanish yet, and I imagine with YouTube's new rules, they won't be available for a long time. Anyway, the exercise is very interesting and definitely worth exploring.
