Jerusalem Overdrive
Clifford A Pickover · 2001
Abstract For a second problem, consider that you must place the prayer rooms so that each row and column contains exactly 2 religions. Is this possible? You can design a computer program to solve this problem by representing the 3 religions as red, green, and amber squares in a 3-by-3 checkerboard. The program uses 3 squares of each color. Have the computer randomly pick combinations, and display them as fast as it can, until a solution is found. The rapidly changing random checkerboard is fascinating to watch, and there are quite a lot of different possible arrangements. In fact, for a 3-by-3 checkerboard there are 1,680 distinct patterns. If it took your computer 1 second to compute and display each 3-by-3 random pattern, how long would it take, on average, to solve the problem and display a winning solution? (There is more than 1 winning solution.)