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Why some people mow a lawn better than others

https://pudding.cool/2026/06/mow/
54•carlos-menezes•1h ago

Comments

tsizz•1h ago
Though I solved it in 49 moves (yay me), I realized when thinking about efficiency, it didn't take into consideration two important things: 1) all of the turns I was making in order to be most efficient, whereas overlapping a few times would have probably taken less time, and 2) I spent a lot of thinking on the spot, as to what was the most efficient path, rather than moving the mower.. so while I only took 49 moves, the time spent on inaction may have balanced the scales with someone who just kept moving.

There's a life lesson in there somewhere, I'm sure!

cortesoft•44m ago
This is a very different problem than actual efficiency when mowing a lawn or vacuuming a rub. Turning takes more work and time, and you miss a part of the 'square' when you are turning (the arc of the curve is not a straight line). In addition, vacuums especially have an area at the edge of the machine that is not cleaned as well, which is why you want a bit of overlap in your lines.

Plus, when mowing a lawn, you often want to leave a nice pattern, so you cant just go for pure efficiency.

jesseb34r•41m ago
I was thinking the same thing. When actually mowing a lawn (or similarly, vacuuming a carpet/rug) I tend to optimize for either long lines or rectangular sections where I can easily mow a straight pattern.
scottyah•19m ago
You should see how optimal the poster's first dates are! Meet at a location with premade bottles of Soylent while they ask 15 questions. Done in 30min. Optimized away the cost and time "wasted" at restaurants or mini-golf type activities.
altairprime•8m ago
[delayed]
paradox460•13m ago
Plus mowing a lawn is meditative

Copying another comment I made earlier

When I was laid off a couple months ago, the first thing I did was go out and mow my lawn. One hour of simple, clean labor, with clear progress, goals, and solitude. It helped me stay out of a bad mental frame, and when I finished I went inside and sent out a few hundred applications

Over the next several weeks, I spent a lot of time that wasn't spent on finding a new job working on my yard. Fixing sprinklers, cleaning up the edges of the grass, turning, peating, and mulching garden beds, and more

While this job search period took longer than any of my past ones, and ostensibly should have been more stressful, it wasn't. Is that because I spent most of the downtime working outdoors? Probably, who knows? It was certainly a better use of my time than sitting indoors moping

sealthedeal•1m ago
There is something beautiful about getting hands dirty with actual dirt/earth. Its such a REAL feeling.
gamerdonkey•9m ago
This is mentioned in the article when discussing a player that found the optimum route:

> Sarah also did something that appeared a bit unnatural. Instead of simply continuing straight a few times, she intuitively and preemptively turned in a snake-like pattern. This highlighted a key difference between real-life mowing and our simplified game, an approach that strong mowers exploited. Sarah, an avid gamer, seemed to recognize this strategy immediately.

adregan•44m ago
I have a small yard and I'm not optimizing for the fewest moves, I'm optimizing for both the longest continuous lines (because I think they look nicest) and the shortest distance to carry the clippings at the end.

I have a different definition of optimal to this game.

RebeccaTheDev•36m ago
Conversely, I once had a very large yard for a suburban home, about a third of an acre. I sectioned my yard into about 5 sections, but I mowed pretty much the same way: whatever lines are longest without stopping.

The less time I spent in Alabama heat, the better.

bluGill•33m ago
I always mow a different path each time because turns and wheels slowly build up damage to the lawn and so I want to spread that out over everything. Push mowers are light enough that this doesn't matter but a rider it does.
tetha•2m ago
I'm right with you. My dad was a farmer and taught me: First deal with the irregular, annoying parts on the outside. Create rectangles with a long side and turning space on each shorter side. Then deal with each rectangle by going back and forth along the long edge. The turnarounds are also a great place for some wheelbarrows to collect the clippings closest to the Komposthaufen.

Hence why I went for the irregular strange part on the lower left first, and then the more regular part on the right. That's the weird rain collection, herb garden, thing we have at the back.

dekhn•38m ago
The author's objective function is incorrect, negating the core claim.
zahlman•35m ago
> You’ve probably done something like mow a lawn or vacuum a rug hundreds of times without thinking much about it. Some part of your brain works out a route that’s usually good enough to get the job done. People are actually pretty good at this, and better than you’d guess for a problem that is hard for computers. We wanted to see it for ourselves, so we built a lawn and asked people to mow it.

Is there supposed to be more content than this?

... If JavaScript is required to view more content than this, why?

Dylan16807•17m ago
> ... If JavaScript is required to view more content than this, why?

By "asked people to mow it" they're talking about the visitors to the site. It's interactive.

It's somewhat a mistake not to have "skip to results" in the actual html. On the other hand, it makes sense they want to force people to see the landing page first. And unless they want to add a whole rendered fallback the results page isn't going to be super functional without javascript.

zahlman•10m ago
Without JavaScript, there is literally no page text beyond that point until the footer. Thee is no indication that there would be any interactive content. There is also no discussion of what the interactive content demonstrates after it. There are no "results" to which a "skip to results" could skip.
Dylan16807•4m ago
Yeah I know. But "literally no page text" is only missing a couple words. The correct version is super short.

The noscript version needs a button and a big box with an X. And even then the button would only be half-functional so I understand skipping it. It mostly just needs a "missing content" warning.

gavinray•34m ago
Semi-related: Worked as a landscaper during my youth, one of my first jobs

I used to think that the line patterns mowed into grass were a purely aesthetic thing.

It turns out, the lines are mowed in a rotation to prevent wearing out the grass and causing damage. First you mow length-wise, then width-wise, then diagonally, finally diagonally in the opposite direction, before cycling through again.

Useless information for you today.

b40d-48b2-979e•14m ago
wat. Causing damage to the grass you're hitting with a (relatively) blunt object in the first place? All you did was waste three times the gas.
sunrunner•9m ago
> hitting with a (relatively) blunt object in the first place

Well there's your problem right there.

collingreen•9m ago
I believe the point is the wheel lines and to vary where the wheels go by changing the pattern each time you mow so you don't, for example, always drive exactly down the fence and cause a rut or mulch buildup or missed area.

I dont think it was "don't hurt the grass while you cut it" or "mow it four times in one sitting".

b40d-48b2-979e•1m ago
How often are you people mowing your lawn that that's even a concern? It's like this is "surburbs: the problem: the comment section"
cyanregiment•33m ago
When I mow lawns I teleport forward 6ft at a time and then a 6x6 square of grass vanishes beneath me.

In the nude.

dgently7•24m ago
have to say i really enjoyed how this was presented.

no comment on the results or the premise of are people good at mowing or just good at playing "snake"

i would be very curious to see if this same result held up when you also factor things like turn effort or "prioritize the longest straight lines bc they look cool"

CrzyLngPwd•17m ago
Dig that lawn out and start growing food, ffs.
doubled112•12m ago
I only have a front lawn (townhouse) and I'm not allowed to plant whatever I want in it.

If somebody reports it, the city can and will come tear it out and charge me for the work.

"Ownership" is a funny thing.

stronglikedan•12m ago
Why? My dogs and I get much more enjoyment out of a lawn than we would a garden. I can buy food, but space to play fetch is a premium.
bob1029•15m ago
This is a pretty big deal once you scale it up.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11119-023-10033-9

contubernio•13m ago
There are a number of bad premises in this article.

For example, most people in the world (outside the USA in particular) have never mowed a lawn. I live in a city of 3.5 million and essentially no one has a lawn.

When you really mow a lawn terrain matters. Most lawns are not flat. One goes on lines of equal height not up and down a hill.

Edges are different than the interior part of the lawn, particularly if they abut flower beds, curbs, etc.

Re passing a given spot is sometimes an efficient way to mow it properly. Particularly in dead ends and odd corners. Etc.

svat•11m ago
This is a really nice presentation of how some people play the authors' lawn-moving game better than others -- a great analysis of the gameplay. But the majority of comments on this HN thread right now are reacting to the title rather than to the article, as if it were about real-life lawn-moving.
sunrunner•8m ago
And not enough people are reacting to the rocks that should just be removed in the first place to make the optimised algorithm a lot simpler. And I thought I was on HN.
firebot•4m ago
100 percent first try. Too easy.
whalesalad•4m ago
The optimum path does not take into account row striping :)
tsizz•4m ago
I'm sure I'm the odd ball, but ever since I was a kid, I liked the diagonal patterns much more than the square lines.. and I'm not just talking about lawns. I would vacuum my room on diagonals.. lol
quickthrowman•3m ago
Probably the same reason some food delivery people place my bag next to the door instead of in front of the outward opening door where it will tip over, unsure what that reason is but I’d like to know.
hbn•1m ago
I started doing it and immediately felt like I was optimizing for minimal moves like a video game, rather than what I'd actually do which is not the same strategy. There's a handful of things different

- The direction you mow leaves a pattern that I generally try to stay parallel to, and mow alongside, and go for long strips even if I have to do a bit of running over already-mowed parts

- I may go diagonal at times

- I've never had a yard that's a maze of rocks

- If there's a small patch I need to mow around, like a garden, I'll likely do a circle around that and use the edge of that mow line as a new edge

stackghost
•
2m ago
>All you did was waste three times the gas.

They don't mean do all those cuts each time you mow. You mow the grass in one direction one day, and then a few days later when it needs cut again, you mow a different pattern.

Brian_K_White•14m ago
You worked for someone better than average, or I worked for someone worse than average, because this sounds like a thoughtful touch and they never told us anything like that.
deweywsu•12m ago
Absolutely correct. If you always mow in the same direction, the grass always gets pushed in the same way by the lawnmowers blades and it will eventually morph to that direction and lose strength, which appears as grass that doesn't stand straight up, and it looks worse.

Why some people mow a lawn better than others

https://pudding.cool/2026/06/mow/
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