Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I think the solution can be reached following from a set of simple observations about a single line of sight:

- in a square room all angles are right

- with wall at right angles the laser light will always create an inscribed square and return to the source for any given angle

- there is exactly one angle in a range <0,90> at which the light bounced from a single wall will go through an arbitrary point in the room

- there are 4 walls which gives at most 4 squares to be blocked

- the blocking point can be set anywhere on the inscribed square before the target - this gives at most 2 points per square (we can consider them left- and right- -hand directed) hence 8 points necessary

- at start we selected only angles from the <0,90> degree range for the ease of calculation, so there are also symmetric versions in the (90,180> range

- which gives us at most 16 points to block all the possible squares in both directions



This line of reasoning reminds me of that one IMO geometry problem…

I’ll unwind this once I’m less brain foggy.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: