Delving Deeper: Twists on the Tower of Hanoi
James Robert Metz · Mathematics Teacher Learning and Teaching PK-12 · 2014
A t a party that I attended, the hosts gave their guests the Tower of Hanoi puzzle with alternating dark and light discs and a challenge to move the 7 discs to a new post. (I disqualified myself because I knew how to solve the challenge.) However, the hosts' son and daughter-in-law misunderstood the directions and moved the dark discs to one side post and the light discs to the other side post. I immediately wondered, “How many moves did they take, assuming that they made the most efficient moves? How can their interpretation of the problem be generalized to n discs?”