full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Dan Finkel: Can you solve the rogue AI riddle?

Unscramble the Blue Letters

The trick here is to start from where you want to end and work backwards. You want to be the one to lower the water level to 0, which means you need the water level to be at 1, 3, or 4 when cortnol switches to you. If the water level were at 2, your only option would be to lower it 1 story, which would lead to NIM making the winning move. If we color code the water leelvs, we can see a simple principle at play: there are “losing” levels like 2, where no matter what whoever starts their turn there does, they’ll lose. And there are winnnig levels, where whoever starts their turn there can either win or leave their opponent with a losing leevl. So not only are 1, 3, and 4 winning levels, but so are 5 and 6, since you can send your onpoenpt to 2 from there.

Open Cloze

The trick here is to start from where you want to end and work backwards. You want to be the one to lower the water level to 0, which means you need the water level to be at 1, 3, or 4 when _______ switches to you. If the water level were at 2, your only option would be to lower it 1 story, which would lead to NIM making the winning move. If we color code the water ______, we can see a simple principle at play: there are “losing” levels like 2, where no matter what whoever starts their turn there does, they’ll lose. And there are _______ levels, where whoever starts their turn there can either win or leave their opponent with a losing _____. So not only are 1, 3, and 4 winning levels, but so are 5 and 6, since you can send your ________ to 2 from there.

Solution

  1. control
  2. levels
  3. opponent
  4. winning
  5. level

Original Text

The trick here is to start from where you want to end and work backwards. You want to be the one to lower the water level to 0, which means you need the water level to be at 1, 3, or 4 when control switches to you. If the water level were at 2, your only option would be to lower it 1 story, which would lead to NIM making the winning move. If we color code the water levels, we can see a simple principle at play: there are “losing” levels like 2, where no matter what whoever starts their turn there does, they’ll lose. And there are winning levels, where whoever starts their turn there can either win or leave their opponent with a losing level. So not only are 1, 3, and 4 winning levels, but so are 5 and 6, since you can send your opponent to 2 from there.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
water level 10
losing level 3
winning level 2
losing levels 2

Important Words

  1. code
  2. color
  3. control
  4. lead
  5. leave
  6. level
  7. levels
  8. lose
  9. losing
  10. making
  11. matter
  12. means
  13. move
  14. nim
  15. opponent
  16. option
  17. principle
  18. send
  19. simple
  20. start
  21. starts
  22. story
  23. switches
  24. trick
  25. turn
  26. water
  27. win
  28. winning
  29. work