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Thread: How many squares are there on a go board?

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
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    Question How many squares are there on a go board?

    How many squares are there on a go board?



    Kami Kaze:
    How many squares are there on a go board? Go away and think
    about it and write your answer down before reading on!

    20 kyu:
    361 of course. "Wrong" says Kami Kaze.

    10 kyu:
    No silly, that's the number of vertices. There are 18x18 or 324
    squares. "Wrong" says Kami Kaze.

    (A pause follows, but frantic calculations occur.)

    1 dan:
    Aha, there are also squares 2x2 and 3x3 and so on, which means
    that the total is 18x18 + 17x17 and so on making a grand total of
    2109!

    crowd:
    Aaaahh very clever! "But wrong" says Kami Kaze.

    3 dan:
    You've forgotten that they aren't squares, they are rectangles.
    There are no squares on a go board!

    crowd:
    That's a dirty trick. "And still wrong" says Kami
    Kaze.

    (Another pause, and many puzzled faces.)

    crowd:
    Well how many squares are there on a go board then?

    Kami Kaze
    It is perfectly true that the smaller areas are rectangles, and
    each of these is one twelth longer than it is wide. Therefore, if
    we take an area twelve rectangles long and thirteen wide, we have
    a large square, and this is the only size which works. There are
    (19-12 ) x (19-13) or 42 such squares. The answer is forty-two.

    Douglas Adams
    We all knew the answer, it's the question that we didn't know.
    Thank you Kami Kaze, the whole question of the meaning of Life,
    The Universe and Everything is simply "How many squares are
    there on a go board?"

    Marvin:
    I tried to tell them, but you know what humans are like, they
    have the attention span of a dead gnat. Here I am with a brain the
    size of a planet, and having worked out all the possible games of
    go, the meaning of life is to have two eyes except in seki when
    ......

    crowd:
    Which restaurant shall we eat at tonight?

    (The crowd departs leaving Marvin talking to himself.)

    marvin:
    I can tell you what the strictly correct komi is if you really
    want to know? Oh never mind me, just carry on. I haven't got any
    feelings of course .....

    (found on the net somewhere where all truth originates )
    Robert Gurisch

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2004
    Location
    Berlin, Germany
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    Default And the answer is ... obvious!

    Now this is really nice!
    Thanks, Robert-san, for the great find!
    And it also leads us to the conclusion that Go, in fact, isn't actually The Game Of Life but The Game Of Life, The Universe, And All The Rest. So goodbye and thanks for all the fish!
    Jan
    Jan Lipsius
    少林寺拳法
    Shorinjikempo
    Humboldt University Berlin Branch

    "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind." Gandhi

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