Worm World

Numerous fascinating questions arise in Worm World. For example, what is the longest path you can find in the three Worm Worlds in Table 13.1 After a few quick... 

TABLE 13.1. Three Worm Worlds Used in the Internet Worm World Tournament Worm World 1 ... 

FIGURE 13.1. Distribution of worm ages for all three Worm Worlds. 

In the previous section we saw that the computer programs were capable of finding some ancient worms, but are there older worms lurking in Worm World After all, the computer programs did not search for every possible path a worm could take. For example, once a worm found an available square, it would commit itself to moving... 

To see whether humans could beat the computer results, I held a grand Internet tournament in which I asked various interested colleagues on the computer networks to find the oldest worm in each of the three Worm Worlds. I also asked whether it is... 

The numbers in parentheses are the starting square number and final path length for each square in Worm World 1. These were computed using the C program. 

When Stephen used his recursive program to perform an exhaustive search for longest paths in Worm World 1, he found a range of path lengths as follows (R=right, L=left, U=up, D=down) ... 

Notice that there are two length-24 paths. The paths for Worm World 2 are ... 

He also constructed a Worm World where the maximum length was less than... 

Worm World has just begun to be explored, and there is fertile ground for future investigations. I am interested in hearing from readers who have explored some of the areas in the following list. 

Worm World constructed with rings. Insert numbers on the various rings and see how far your worms can travel using the mles in this chapter. 

WORM WORLD EXPLORER PROGRAM by Stephen Tavener... 

The Internet Worm World Tournament Abkhasian Areas Logical Labyrinth Hyperworms in Abkhasia... 

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