Mastering JavaScript Functional Programming - Second Edition

Divide and conquer – the Towers of Hanoi

With the divide and conquer strategy, solving a problem requires two or more recursive solutions. For starters, let's consider a classic puzzle, invented by a French mathematician, Édouard Lucas, in the nineteenth century. The puzzle involves a temple in India, with 3 posts a 64 golden disks of decreasing diameter. The priests have to move the disks from the first post to the last one following two rules: only one disk can be moved at a time, and a larger disk can never be placed on top of a smaller disk. According to the legend, when the 64 disks are moved, the world will end. This puzzle is usually marketed under the name Towers of Hanoi (yes, they changed countries!) with fewer than 10 disks. See ...