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?

patched Ruby to use RSpec assertions.

somebody already adjusted the description

Description has been redone.

I see. Somewhere somewhere in the depths of my backlog I have a plan to clean up formatting and grammar of the author's challenges, and I might think of some better wording when I get to it IDK when.

EDIT: I redid the description, hopefully for the better.

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).

I agree that the description is poor w.r.t. wording and formatting, yes. This is a signature of this particular author, and descriptions of many of their challenges have been cleared up, but still not all. I also agree that this task obfuscates a trivial task as a not-so-trivial task, no arguing here. But still I do not think that the problem is stated in an unclear way. Contrary, I personally think that "number that first and last bits are set bits" is quite clear (modulo grammar) and explicit. The fact that the questions "Is the first bit set? Is the last bit set?" can be reduced to a simpler question is exactly the thing which I like about the problem. Being able to reduce a seemingly complex problem to a much simpler problem is, IMO, a valuable skill.

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.

You call it a joke, I call it problem analysis. This is the main challenge here, which i personally find quite nice.