If the strand has exactly eight beads, which one of the following is an acceptable order, starting from the clasp, fo...

shunhe August 13, 2020

Hi @nelson316,

Thanks for the question! So this one is a bit tricky and requires some careful reading of the rule, but this isn’t an exception to the rule. Let’s take a look at the relevant text, which tells us that “if a purple bead is adjacent to a yellow bead, any bead that immediately follows and any bead that immediately precedes that pair must be red.” What is that telling us? Well, it there’s PY, then the bead before and after will be red. But does it tell us that there has to be a bead before or after? No, not necessarily! And that’s the trick to this one. So as you noted, it’s because PY is at the front. The rule doesn’t say, “if a purple bead is adjacent to a yellow bead, there’s a bead that immediately follows and a bead that immediately precedes that pair, and they must be red.” It’s more like “if there’s PY, and if there’s a bead before/after, then those beads are red.” But there doesn’t need to be a bead before or after, so PY could be at the beginning or end.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

AJamesIII April 14, 2021

Very tricky. Thanks for the response Shunhe. I had the same thought process as Keeley.

Ivana November 18, 2021

I had this same thought!

Audrey December 28, 2021

Good to know!

Ravi February 11, 2022

Happy to know you guys see it clearly now.

Michael March 14, 2023

here for the same reason. this will 100% trick most people bc we are being trained to look for these types of tricks and so we apply rules where they dont belong sometimes. even careful reading of this didnt help me as i assumed that correctly at first then changed my mind due to overthinking xD

Emil-Kunkin March 18, 2023

I certainly see you about the overthinking aspect! One general rule I like to use for games is that if the game doesn't tell you something is banned, than you're allowed to do it.