14-15 Puzzle é impossível?
Objetos & Vídeos
O quebra-cabeças mais famoso de Sam Loyd foi o 14-15 Puzzle, apresentado em 1878. Loyd escreveu sobre este desafio no seu livro Cyclopaedia of 5000 Puzzles, Tricks and Conundrums, um livro publicado pelo seu filho em 1914, referindo:
“Older inhabitants of Puzzleland will remember how in the seventies I drove the entire world crazy with a little box of movable blocks which became known as the "14-15 Puzzle". The fifteen blocks were arranged in the square box in rectangular order, but with the 14 and 15 reversed as shown. The puzzle consisted of moving the blocks about, one at a time, to bring them back to the present position in every respect except that the error in the 14 and 15 was corrected.
A prize of $1000, offered for the first correct solution to the problem, has never been claimed, although there are thousands of persons who say they have performed the required feat.
People became infatuated with the puzzle and ludicrous tales are told of shopkeepers who neglected to open their stores; of a distinguished clergyman who stood under a street lamp all through a wintry night trying to recall the way he had performed the feat. The mysterious feature of the puzzle is that none seem able to remember the sequence of moves whereby they feel sure they have succeeded in solving the puzzle. Pilots are said to have wrecked their ships, and engineers rush their trains past stations. A famous Baltimore editor tells how he went for his noon lunch and was discovered by frantic staff long past midnight pushing little pieces of pie around on a plate! Farmers are known to have deserted their ploughs ...”
Claro, Loyd sabia que os seus $ 1.000 estavam seguros, pois o quebra-cabeças não pode ser resolvido. A mania varreu a América, onde os patrões colocaram avisos proibindo jogar este quebra-cabeças durante o horário de expediente. Na Alemanha, foi jogado por deputados no Reichstag, enquanto na França foi descrito como um flagelo maior do que o álcool ou o tabaco.
Deixamos o vídeo do canal Numberphile onde o Professor Steven Bradlow explica a razão pela qual este quebra-cabeças é impossível.
Curioso? Não perca!
Fonte: https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Loyd/
Por Adília Marinho