3 ms·
I did a little variant of the classic river boat animal problem: "so you're on one side of the river with 2 wolves and 4 sheep and a boat that can carry 2 enti
by Tepix 1y ago
I did a little variant of the classic river boat animal problem:
"so you're on one side of the river with 2 wolves and 4 sheep and a boat that can carry 2 entities. The wolves eat the sheep when they are left alone with the sheep. How do you get them all across the river?"
ChatGPT (free+reasoning) came up with a solution with 11 moves, it didn't think about going back empty.
Qwen3 figured out the optimal solution with 7 moves and summarized it nicely:
First, move the wolves to the right to free the left shore of predators.
Then shuttle the sheep in pairs, returning with wolves when necessary to keep both sides safe.
Finally, return the wolves to the right when all sheep are across.
- roywiggins 1y agoMy favorite variant is the trivial one (one item). Most of the models now are wise to it though, but for a while they'd cheerfully take the boat back and forth, occasionally hallucinating wolves, etc.
- heroprotagonist 1y agoWhat if we add 3 cats, but they can ride alone or on a single sheep's back, and wolves will always attack the cat first but leave the sheep alone if the cat is not on a sheep, but will attack both cat and sheep at same time if cat is riding a sheep. Wolves can each only make one attack while crossing. Claude's 7 step for the original turns to 11 steps for this variant.