Tuesday 15 July 2014

Pigs and Aliens

A puzzle I have come across in a maths book, re-imaged as kind of a chess problem.
The picture to your right is actually a pig sty, divided into 64 sections. The pigs are the white pieces, while the black pieces are aliens you wish to catch the pigs. Each alien can move 1 square either horizontally or vertically, while each pig can move to any adjacent square (including diagonally). The Aliens get to move first.
When the aliens first try and catch the pigs, they find they cannot. The two questions are: What are they doing wrong? and What strategy should they use to succeed?
 

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