Blog Posts: Puzzles

In a (much) earlier post of mine, I discussed a puzzle called Top Spin (once made by Binary Arts), in which 20 beads were placed on an oval track with a turntable that could flip the four beads that occupy it. I showed that it was possible to reverse the order of the beads, from [1, 2, 3, ..., 19, 20] to [20, 19, ..., 2, 1], even if the beads were placed on a straight track instead of an oval one.

Top Spin was a puzzle in which 20 beads were placed on an oval track with a turntable, such that any four consecutive beads could be flipped. Naturally, I wondered whether it was possible to reverse the order of the beads, from [0, 1, ..., 19] to [19, 18, ..., 0]. As it turns out, this is possible even if the beads are placed on a straight track instead of an oval one.