A simple puzzle involving moving discs between rods. Commonly used as a programming kata/exercise and frequently set as homework when introducing the concept of recursion.
The Tower of Hanoi or Towers of Hanoi , also called the Tower of Brahma or Towers of Brahma, is a mathematical game or puzzle. It consists of three rods, and a number of disks of different sizes which can slide onto any rod. The puzzle starts with the disks in a neat stack in ascending order of size on one rod, the smallest at the top, thus making a conical shape.
The objective of the puzzle is to move the entire stack to another rod, obeying the following rules:
- Only one disk may be moved at a time.
- Each move consists of taking the upper disk from one of the rods and sliding it onto another
- rod, on top of the other disks that may already be present on that rod.
- No disk may be placed on top of a smaller disk.