Sometimes, when people don't want to get lost, they drop rice in their trail. How nice! What a wonderously intuitive idea for tracing your steps! Someone should get a medal for that idea. That is, until I found a fatal flaw...
So, two parties are tracing steps and they get crossed. NO! Now, when we get back to camp, its in shambles, the clothes don't fit, the meat was left out of the cooler. What fiends took over this natural abode whilst we played among the lillies? Wait, was that rice the same... Oh, shit. We crossed rice paths with another group... Damn! Second time this month! Well, its all good man, just buy colored rice, and you'll never have that mixup again.
Some would say that if two parties have the same color then they are still SOL. Very good observation, little mind, but I've manufactured 265 million colors of rice, so your chances are slim, especially considering the fact that almost nobody uses rice to trace their steps anymore.-- daseva, Jun 20 2005 String is just so passé.-- daseva, Jun 20 2005 Doesn't anyone use GPS anymore?-- Worldgineer, Jun 20 2005 You're unbiased critisisms are always welcome, [zen_tom]...
But I will be calling you into the Anti-Minotaur Commission. You sound fresh from a staging with one of these beasts... even smell a little funny... telling you first is the least I can do.-- daseva, Jun 20 2005 May I point out in the rice v string debate the string is superior. String has vector quality, where as rice has only scalar quality.
I agree that your 265 million colours of rice do much to remove this difference, but still each grain of rice does not inform the adventurer of the next grain of rice to follow, especially in the slim chance where they chose the wrong colour in a 265 million + 1 labyrinth... You can leave as much rice as you want, but you cannot be sure you have found the next grain.
String, by it's very nature, has precise vector qualities allowing you to know the next section of string to follow, however many string wielders there are in your area.
This string argument does have two failings,
1) Important user instruction - use one long piece of continuous string. Do not disassemble.
2) May not work so well near Gordium.-- afrocelt, Jun 21 2005 [zen_tom], excellent updates! Just to summarize, rice is third (out of four) in overall effectiveness, and the only safe navigational tool amongst dragon infested landscapes.-- daseva, Jun 21 2005 random, halfbakery