Cheesy Cheeseman is very much a Bob Mortimer name. Thanks for the laugh!

Edit: I get it now. The list I'm supposed to return is not the pancake stack, but list of positions in flip order.

I'm having problems with the Java translation, but only because I don't get what the

Invalid flip (outside range 0 to number-of-pancakes-1) ==> expected: true but was: false

error message is supposed to mean. I implemented a solution where the elements in the lists are flipped like pancakes and even got the same sequence in the example test. The error message apparently is expecting me to make an invalid flip. Also, how are the flip measured?

Is my solution supposed to flip the pancakes until they're ordered (like I've been doing) or only once? What am I missing here?

I agree it is a valuable skill. If you wanted to make minimal changes, I would just clarify what a set bit is. Because this is a 7 kyu kata and most beginners don't know what a set bit is (and that included me when I first tried this some while back).

Writing a poor description and being purposefully unclear is not problem analysis, it's just poor design on the author's part. Saying that the poor design is the main challege is... weird: people come here for education and practice, to build and debug code to a problem. Yes, understanding the problem is part of the assignment but it shouldn't be the hard part.

I've taught as a tutor, a teacher and a professor. Giving a purposefully confusing assignment instead of being clear is just counter-productive.