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[Mathematician]

arnezami

I checked the first solution - the one leftmost in your post - I transcribed this as:

[Gibbet]

[arnezami]

[arnezami]

Here are my results of all the things I tried. It now includes the solutions from rotating individual pieces (suggested by Mathematician).

The following table shows the number of solutions with a 4x4 map, the normal "odd map", the 3 rotations of the boat directions and the 3 rotations of the individual pieces. All solutions are found by covering more than 99% of the search space so these numbers are pretty accurate.

[SteveC]

I'm going with the MC screwup idea until we've had some sort of word back from them.. Anyone know what Kurt has to say in his hints?

[arnezami]

Here is the source of my solver.

Please read the ReadMeFirst.txt first.

arnezami

[arnezami]

Ok. Something just occured to me:

I was first thinking: maybe the island numbers (visited by a boat) should follow some kind of pattern. Maybe ascending or descending or some other pattern. This would certainly lower the amount of possible solutions.

But a very good way of ensuring that there would be only 1 solution is to make sure the pattern/series of numbers boat B went through would actually mean something. And then I saw something interesting: there are 27 islands: possibly 26 letters and one character for spacing? Is it possible we are actually searching for a word or sentence created by the numbers B goes through? And maybe the routes of the other boats also mean something?

Just a thought...

[xorsyst]

Here's my solver

[ahdok]

If your solver has recorded the solutions, can you check how many have all the boats end on the same island? I have a feeling the sailors should get to go to the pub together when they finish.

(it's a fairly obvious rule you can add in which cuts down the number of solutions by lots and lots )

I tried looking at the cast adrift to get some clues, but that one was just "which island do all the boats visit" so it didn't help muchly.

[ramsfan]

This card is driving me mad. Some thoughts for anyone who like me is doing this using pen and paper.
If you start by looking at C having to travel west, this excludes west from being to the left of a line linking 17 and 15. In turn this limits B's first island to 1,10,2,26. If you consider the second move to the east, this eliminates 2, and I think 26. So I think the first island has to be 1 or 10, which pretty much fixes the direction of north. Actually it throws up 2 issues about this card. You can't sail to 1 without going through 10, but a real ship would easily sail past 10 whilst sailing in the same direction. There's no rule to say it must stop at the first island in a particular direction. I guess that the direction can be within 22 degrees each side of a particular compass point. Considering 10 as the first island, do we go for the centre of the island, or either side, which gives quite a range for north. Also there's no rule to say you can't revisit the same island. I've tried a number of different combinations: all wrong. Hoping someone can put these thoughts to better use than me so far.

[Bakers_12]

What if the compleated map is of the whole "globe" , so the east and west would meet up ? No wait that can't be right as there would then be more that one solve. Forget this post .

[lillyplop]

I am using the ultimate power of....Powerpoint. Systematically drawing on an arrowed line from each point.

In 24 hours I have managed to eliminate 105 combinations......phew this is tough.

Anyone know how many combinations I may have left?

[arnezami]

I've been improving the solver and been producing solutions in a form that can be analyzed by everyone. The solver now has a 100% coverage of the search space. Interestingly this resulted in quite an increase in solutions (i'm glad i did this improvement ). I've done all the searches again (with the different map shapes/rotations etc).

All the following solutions are found by covering 100% of the search space.

[TopGun2]

[arnezami]