On Jan 1, 2006, at 15:47, James Edward Gray II wrote:

> On Dec 30, 2005, at 7:37 AM, Ruby Quiz wrote:
>
>> Problem: Move from the starting point to the target, minimizing  
>> the number of
>> operations.
>
> Here's my simple breadth-first search with a single optimization  
> (described in comments).  It's not at all fast enough for the big  
> examples people have been throwing around, but it's pretty simple.

OK, so I didn't have time to code it up and see for sure, what with  
some transatlantic travel and New Year's and all that stuff, but the  
first thing that struck me when reading the problem was "dynamic  
programming" - did anyone take this route and hence give me a bit of  
satisfaction that my instincts were right?

m.s.