A place to air possible concerns or difficulties in understanding ProjectEuler problems. This forum is not meant to publish solutions. This forum is NOT meant to discuss solution methods or giving hints how a problem can be solved.
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quilan wrote:Actually experimenting & trying to find an angle that did those reflections didn't do a lick of help for me.
I'm thinking that checking all the 29 angles of the form of "n degrees" (61 - 89) for overlaps, disregarding any "target" (number of reflections), might be a better strategy to follow. Although i haven't yet got to doing it myself.
Very deceptive clue as well . After a long long time, I finally managed to solve the problem and I posted how I solved it in the private forum along with an image of the various solutions for a specific value of bounces. I would say trying to find an angle that did those reflections is going to make it tough due to precision issues but experimenting and observing the pattern certainly helps. This problem made me also realize the obvious that spotting patterns out of integers is a lot easier than those that are (seemingly) out of real numbers. Looking back, may be one of the very few Project Euler problems for which I had to write so many different pieces of code to study the problem.
quilan wrote:Does it count as a clue to say I had to draw it on paper before it finally clicked? I hope not. Very very deceptive problem. Actually experimenting & trying to find an angle that did those reflections didn't do a lick of help for me.
. After a long long time, I finally managed to solve the problem and I posted how I solved it in the private forum along with an image of the various solutions for a specific value of bounces. I would say trying to find an angle that did those reflections is going to make it tough due to precision issues but experimenting and observing the pattern certainly helps. This problem made me also realize the obvious that spotting patterns out of integers is a lot easier than those that are (seemingly) out of real numbers. Looking back, may be one of the very few Project Euler problems for which I had to write so many different pieces of code to study the problem.