The Tower of Hanoi

According to legend, priests at the Temple of Brahma in the Indian city of Benares are toiling around the clock on a critical chore.

On a brass platform there stands a row of three tall diamond pins.  Stacked on them are 64 large discs with holes in their centers; the discs are solid gold, each a different size.  The priests move the discs one at a time from one pin to another, without ever placing any disc upon a smaller one.  Their ultimate challenge is to move all the discs from the first pin to the last pin.  When this mission is complete, the Universe will end in a giant clap of thunder.

Fortunately for the rest of us, the world will not disappear anytime soon — at least, not for this reason.  Solving the puzzle requires a minimum of 2⁶⁴-1 moves, a rather imposing number.  In fact, even if the priests are able to move the discs at the rate of one per second (which they cannot), the Universe will not explode for nearly 600 billion years!

Various names have been ascribed to this puzzle.  As the most common choice is Tower of Hanoi, that title has been selected.

You may attempt to destroy all of Creation yourself on a more limited scale, using up to 12 discs.  You don't even need a mouse!

Here is a sample game screen:

Download:  TowerOfHanoi.zip  Trust me! no viruses

Click on the download to extract the game file.  Place it anywhere on your hard disk, and create a shortcut to it if you like.  No other setup is required, and no other files will be created.

For more technical information on Tower of Hanoi, click here:

— Programming the Tower of Hanoi —