Dr. Watson’s dream explained
- Details
- Written by Vitaly Novikov
You were also puzzled by Dr. Watson’s strange ‘soccer/mahjong’ dream? Here’s the explanation of it…
Question 1: What was Dr. Watson’s hand?
Question 2 (for experts): What was Sherlock Holmes talking about?
Answer 1. Dr. Watson was sitting with the hand:
concealed -- 
.
Then he got (from the wall of discard, does not matters) he declared a Kong – the 4th bird which asked for more tile from the wall.The rest tiles in Dr. Watson’s hand -- -- call for 8 (!) different tiles (totaling 22 tiles).
Answer 2. Strictly speaking the one-suit structure 311113 which calls for 8 tiles (all 6 “in” the range plus 2 “outside” range) must be named as “middle” brother of “Nine Gates” hand. Why? Because the latter with the structure 311111113 can call not only for the tiles 1-9 but also for “0” and “10” – two tiles outside range would those tiles exist. And structure 313 () may be named as “youngest” brother of “Nine Gates” wait, waiting for 5 tiles (3 in range, 2 outside the range).
It is difficult to judge the difficulty of problems, but some did take me some time to solve.
I especially enjoyed the '32nd of December' and its fourth question.
Thanks to Vitaly for the problems, to Martin for hosting the "venue" and congrats to Sylvain and Scott for their success.
A: two kongs of the same suit (i.e. 8 one-suit tiles) and a kong of wind
So... winds are now suit tiles?
And they are in every suit?
Wow!
Looks like I've misunderstood the question and it was actually an easy one!
Was it because I was the only one to answer the question within the allotted time?
Just curious.
Thanks.
At first, it looks like each player had three pure melded kongs, two of them separated by two numbers (e.g. 1 and 4), and that their left-side neighbour is waiting for these two said kongs with a ryanmen (e.g. _23_).
But it turns out there are not enough tiles for that.
So, here's the trick:
Watson had: melded: 1111m 4444m 5555m, concealed: 23s EE.
Lestrade had: melded: 1111s 4444s 5555s, concealed: 23p SS.
Holmes had: melded: 1111p 4444p 5555p, concealed: 78m WW.
Mrs. Hudson had: melded: 6666m 9999m, concealed: RRRR(concealed kong) 23m NN, and erronously melded as flowers: 2223m.
It certainly "cut off all conceivable scenarios".