I've been given rather a lot of hospitality lately, and it's time I reciprocated. Which is why I was going through the various people I owe a meal to, talking aloud as I did so, trying to work out who would get on with whom.
Listening to me running through a kaleidoscopic set of combinations, attempting to find the ones where no guest would be likely to attack another, no feathers would be too drastically ruffled during the course of an evening and everyone might actually get on, my younger daughter said, "Oh this is just like that game we used to play at school where you had to work out how to get a cow and a fox and a lamb and a snake and a wolf across a river, without allowing any of the dangerous ones to be left unsupervised with any of the ones they might attack."
So which of my friends are snakes and which are wolves and which are gentle sheep and cattle? And what will be the most entertaining gathering of them all?
Oh zmkc, I have so many lists next to my bed of people to have over and all sorts of combinations of who with whom, the end result being that weeks, and months go by without having anyone over and I'm most frustrated with myself!
ReplyDeleteLove your daughter's analogy!
Enjoyed that Robert Frost, by the way.
DeleteYour daughter's judgment is correct. The problem for one dinner is simpler than for the standard "cannibals and missionaries" or "wolf, goat, cabbage", though. What you need to do is set up a simple database of friends, where every person in it has at at most one of two relations to any either, either "can't be invited without" (as for example husband and wife) or "can't be invited with". That done, it will be a simple matter to code up a script (a program) to generate combinations.
ReplyDeleteUntil the computer's hard disk plays up and the whole thing goes haywire and you find yourself spending an evening surrounded by wolves and one cabbage.
DeleteIt simplifies the menu. And your friend list.
DeleteI don't want to be on the menu though.
Delete