So I called my mom and brother two weeks ago to try to get my family together for dinner. Planning time to see my family is like the late stages of the game Rummikub. You know, the part where you get to completely rearrange the board to try to fit in one more piece?

Each person gets a chance to rearrange everything each iteration, and if it doesn't work out they can't always put it back the way it was when they started. Arthur believes this to be equivalent to the Merkel-Napsack Problem, is NP-Hard and that a non-parallel computer can't solve this efficiently. Who needs made-up games like Sudoku when you get to play the family logistics game? So when I say that I had dinner with my family on Monday night, which including my two cousins in Baltimore makes it a six person game, it's a pretty amazing feat.

Diagram drawn by Arthur

9/28/11