Kani Lulu, the oldest banana carrier of Africa, has received the task to believer the castle Kulima, which is situated 100 km away front the plantation. The king Kulima has totally ordered 300 bananas. The way is very arduous though, so Kani Lulu's camel is only satisfied with feeding of one banana per kilometre of gone way, anyway it's too weak to carry more than hundred bananas. The king Kulima isn't agree to sponsor camel food, so it's your task to think up a transport strategy for the poor Kani Lulu to keep the loss of bananas so low as possible.
Write an answer in the style e.g. »load 70 bananas - 27,53 km forward - unload 20 bananas - 27.53 km backward - load 100 bananas ...« etc. and send it by e-mail together with your postal address to me.
There is a small utility available for helping you while solving this problem on form of a QuickBASIC download program (dialogue only in German language). System requirements: IBM compatible computer with VGA graphic card, 500 KB free conventional memory or more, DOS 5.0 or higher with the included QBASIC.EXE. Start of program with QBASIC /RUN \PATH\PATH2\KAM_AUFG (\PATH\PATH2 = your target directory where you have downloaded the program):
Meaning of items: point A = plantation, B = castle Kulima, small cursor on the top = Kani Lulu with camel, bars drawn below = bananas on the corresponding way position. Display in the bottom range (from the top to bottom): current way position, number of bananas on the wayside, number of carrying bananas. Program control by keyboard only: arrow keys (moving and load or unload), Home/End walking on the start respectively end of way directly, Ctrl+Home/Ctrl+End load respectively unload directly to maximum, Esc finish program and R reset all (at the begin, you will stick fast with a camel without food much more times than you think!).
Important: It's allowed to work with fraction numbers of bananas (e.g. 2¾ banana) respectively way sections (e.g. 3¼ km)! Have a lot of pleasure while puzzling! This puzzle task is continued after the receipt of the first right answer, your always have still the chance to break the record!
Current state: Solved by Dale Copeland with 53 1/3 delivered bananas; see her answer * Last update: September 30th, 1996