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From: pss4@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Paul S Shannon)
Subject: HI-Q game
Message-ID: <1991Apr24.055054.16724@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
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Reply-To: pss4@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Paul S Shannon)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 1991 05:50:54 GMT

I've recently been introduced to a game I believe is distributed
by Mattel as "HI-Q".  It consists of a cross-shaped board made of
holes in which pegs can be placed:

        X  X  X
        X  X  X
  X  X  X  X  X  X  X
  X  X  X  X  X  X  X
  X  X  X  X  X  X  X
        X  X  X
        X  X  X

Initially, all the holes are filled but the center one.  Moves are made
by jumping a peg over another horizontally or vertically, not diagonally,
and removing the peg jumped over (like checkers).  The object is to end
up with one peg in the center.

I've written a program to "randomly" move around pieces in the hope that
it would pop out the solution, but after 1000 games the game never got
below 3 pegs left over--this doesn't seem to be the way to go.  I was
wondering if there might be some learning procedure that would lead to
successively better end states, till the game was finally solved.

thanks,
joseph jons

(guest on paul shannon's account).

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