Problem #93

The Ceryneian Hind

The story

Hercules’ next task is to catch the Ceryneian Hind, which is as fast as the wind. Artemis considers this a sacred animal and will not give it up to Hercules easily. In order to capture it, he must play a game against Artemis. Artemis has carefully assembled a stick figure of her favourite animal for the game.

The game

The figure is made out of sticks which can be either yellow, golden, brown or green. The black line in the figure represents the ground.

  • At each turn, a player plucks out a stick from the figure. Any "hanging" sticks, i.e. those that have no connection to the ground, either directly, or through other sticks, will fall down and are immediately discarded.
  • Hercules can only pluck the orange sticks, and Artemis, the brown ones. Both of them can pluck the yellow and green sticks. The one to pluck the last stick wins the game, and gets the Hind.

Hercules also spots a number of other interesting creatures and gambles against Artemis to capture them all, playing the same game for each of them.

For each game,
A represents Hercules losing no matter who starts, if Artemis plays intelligently.
H represents Hercules wins no matter who starts, if he plays intelligently.
F represents the situation where the first player always loses.
S represents the situation where the second player always loses.

For the 5 figures given below, enter the string of answers in the order of the labels of these figures.

Golden Hind

Golden Hind

Golden Hind eating grass

Golden Hind eating grass

Wild Zebra

Wild Zebra

Wild Zebra eating grass

Wild Zebra eating grass

Poisonous Toad

Poisonous Toad

Contributed by Project Gauss

Solved by 4 users

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