foot wrote:
And, by the way, how did you know that "Moving to the opposite
corner of a 3x3 square always takes four moves."

I honestly can't remember. It's something I've known `forever', so to
speak.


If it was, directly, or indirectly, received from a book, how can
you maintain that such a book is useless?

Perhaps it was from a book. But if it was, it was a book that
happened to contain this information and much more besides, not a book
specifically about how to get a knight from A to B.


David Richerby wrote:
I'll admit to being utterly flabbergasted as to why somebody would
write an eighty-page book explaining how to do something this
simple.

I never claimed you had to read the entire eighty-page book to learn
the methods within. In fact, in my review I explicitly said that
you'd only need to read about 8 pages of it to learn the method.

Well, yes. But it's still an eighty page book and it's still eight
pages to describe how to do something trivial.


I, for one, am glad the author didn't try to cram the whole method
in to a single page, without any examples, explanations, exercises,
diagrams, or answers... as I would have probably had a harder time
learning it.

Of course. And it may well be an especially well-written book that
explains the method extremely well. But it still strikes me as being
like a book that teaches you enough rock-climbing skills to let you
get to the second floor of your house by scaling the outside wall and
coming in through the window, rather than just telling you to walk up
the stairs.


Dave.

--
David Richerby Broken Ghost (TM): it's like a
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ haunting spirit but it doesn't work!