MathDB

Ross wants to play solitaire with his deck of

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playing cards, but he’s discovered that the deck is “boxed”: some cards are face up, and others are face down. He wants to turn them all face down again, by repeatedly choosing a block of consecutive cards, removing the block from the deck, turning it over, and replacing it back in the deck at the same point. What is the smallest number of such steps Ross needs in order to guarantee that he can turn all the cards face down again, regardless of how they start out?

Problem Statement