Eight Ball

The other day I browsed over to Kasper Graversen’s blog “First Class Thoughts”. His latest post was about a puzzle which most software developers fail. I got the answer right. However I had been asked the question a number of times in the past. The first time I heard this question, I too got it wrong. At least my answer was not optimal. I encourage you to read about the puzzle yourself on Kasper's blog.

One thing I noticed about this blog was that the ads on the right hand side got repeated three times down the page. I did not think this was done intentionally. The ads were supplied by Google AdWords. I like when people maximize their earning opportunities with AdSense. So I actually got in contact with Kasper to let him know about this. The other weird thing about the ads were that they did not correspond closely with the subject of his blog post. This is most likely due to Google’s matching algorithm, and not Kasper’s blog post. I guess I could also contact Google about this mismatch.

My girl is always asking me to challenge her with cool puzzles like this. Perhaps I will try to recount this particular Eight Ball puzzle for her. I have frequently found that people who ask me about this puzzle have a good time when I get the answer wrong. They usually try to guide me to the correct solution. I think in the future I shall purposely get the answer to this question wrong to promote good discussion.

Here is a shout out to Kasper Graversen for a nice blog post. Although Kasper himself is not allowed to say so, you should click on some of the ads on the right hand side of his web site. Kasper most likely gets a little cash each time this happens. Hopefully Google will not constitute my words here as a violation of their AdSense policies. In the effort of full disclosure, I used to have AdSense on my blogs until I got dropped by Google. So I have a little insight into the matter.