The Tower of Hanoi Game

The Tower of Hanoi is a team building game with a mathematical twist allows for ample group discussion, planning and problem solving within the participants.

The puzzle consists of three towers/posts/rods with 5 or more discs arranged in conical shape with smallest at the top. The objective of the game is to move the entire stack to another rod retaining the particular order. There are few conditions to be followed while playing this game:

1) At a time, only one disc can be moved from the tower

2) Only the uppermost disc on a tower can be shifted

3) the team is not allowed to put a larger disc on a smaller disc

The minimum number of moves required to solve a Tower of Hanoi puzzle is 2n – 1, where n is the number of disks.

The topics of this publication: interactions, strategy

Iterative solution

A simple solution for the puzzle is to alternate moves between the smallest piece and a non-smallest piece. When moving the smallest piece, always move it to the next position in the same direction (to the right if the starting number of pieces is even, to the left if the starting number of pieces is odd).

If there is no tower position in the chosen direction, move the piece to the opposite end, but then continue to move in the correct direction. For example, if you started with three pieces, you would move the smallest piece to the opposite end, then continue in the left direction after that. When the turn is to move the non-smallest piece, there is only one legal move.

Doing this will complete the puzzle in the fewest moves.