Puzzles
Nine rings, looped on a bar — remove them all, and you'll need over 300 moves
A sequence of rings hangs looped on interlinked pillars, threaded through a bar. The rules only let you slide one ring at a time under a strict condition based on the rings next to it. How many moves does it take to remove all of them?
Reveal the answer
With 9 rings, it takes 341 moves to fully disentangle — the count roughly doubles with each extra ring. The puzzle, called Baguenaudier or Chinese Rings, was described in print by Gerolamo Cardano in 1550, and mathematician Édouard Lucas later showed its solution follows the same binary logic as the Tower of Hanoi.