My good friend A.C. Torn has an ENDLESS amount of puzzles.
here is a great little puzzle he gave me not so long ago.

The male mathematical Mole is a very strange creature. once born it behaves in a strange way.
It starts somewhere under the X-axis under some integer (random).
if you are looking for it and did not find it under that number (you can only look under one number at a time), it will move 3 units to the right and wait under that integer. If you look for it again and did not find it - it will move again 3 units to the right, and so on forever.

you really like to catch that nasty one but you have no idea where it is or where it started its journey. can you devise a plan to catch it?

the female mathematical mole is even nastier.
it also starts under some random integer but once born moves a certain whole number to the left or to the right under the X-axis. This number is constant for each mole once born. The direction is also constant throughout the mole's life. This number can be for example 20389428093782397 or it can also be 2 or 87 or whatever...

can you devise a plan to catch female mathematical moles? or maybe prove it is impossible...

ND

TomasB just caught the male mole...

Stan also caught the male mole...

the female mole is still elusive

I let the mole go when he convinced me that I had nothing to gain since Tomas had already collected the bounty.
It later occurred to me that it might not even be the same mole. Was I conned?

The female mole puzzle will have to be added to the ever-growing list of Nir-posted puzzles that still have me stumped. Thank you for torturing us with another.

Gotta continue fe-mole hunting.

Nir,

I've PMed my strategy for capturing the female mole.

Stan, using feromones is cheating.

Nir, I don't have time for this. I have Bill Malone's Marlo DVDs and 6 volumes of Marlo Magazine to work through. Your excellent puzzles are very distracting.

/Tomas

I woke up this morning with a PM in my inbox from Stan.
I am happy to inform that Stan, after "digging" all over the X-Axis have managed to capture also the female mathematical mole in a very elegant way.
I learned however, that he did heard of my buddy who gave me the puzzle. Somehow this helped him catch the "femole" as he called it...

good job Stan!!!

TomasB - I got a bunch of good puzzles I harvested around at friends/the web/found on the floor. I got much more time since I commute now to work using the train, so I do a lot of puzzles.
Expect new puzzles soon and better watch those DVDs ASAP...

Nir

Stan definitely is da man. Fantastic work!

/Tomas

I haven't a clue!
Please, a hint either on the board or PM.
This is driving me crazy.

Jack Shalom

2 hints sent via PM

Okay, think I caught the male mole. Thanks for the hints! I sent Nir a PM with my answer.

Clarification for the female--do we know beforehand the direction or distance the mole travels each time?

Jack

We don't know the distance nor the direction. we just know they are both constant.
if we had known them catching the "femoles" would be identical to the regular moles
good work on the male moles!!!

Yes, that's what I thought.

*sigh*

Global hint - the name of the friend is an anagram... (like no one noticed...)

Find the hidden female? Maybe I can't. Or maybe I can!

Spaced out!

Does the mole leave a hole to let you know "MM was here"?

Nope
you have no knowledge whether it was there or not

Jack (landmark),

just got himself a female mole...

congrats!