puzzle creation - Help me improve the jumping robot problem

I recently posed a puzzle about Robot High and Robot Long

That puzzle was inspired by a comic I saw in Benjamin Bear in Fuzzy Thinking by Philippe Coudray. The particular comic is shown below:

As you can see in the edit history of the linked question, my original translation of the comic to puzzle added a bunch of numbers. This caused too much misdirection and calculations, though, and led many away from the intended solution. Based on comments and answers, I tried to generalize the problem. There were still a variety of responses, though, and many were valid.

I understand that the Puzzling community are clever and the lateral-thinking tag really encourages open-ended thinking and comes with its own problems.

My question, therefore, is two-fold:

1. What's a better way to convert the comic to a puzzle intended for the Puzzling.SE community without resorting to a long list of caveats?


2. What down remove from that version and still have something that would still work for most "normal" people?

Answer

I don't think the puzzle in its original form would work here on PSE. There are too many loop holes to be closed before it has a single answer. It might work for 'normal' people but I still think you would need a fairly strong list of disallowed tactics. One of the main problems I think with your original two robots formulation, was that you made then the same size, and therefore presumably about the same mass. This makes the idea of one successfully bouncing off the top of the other seem a bit far fetched.

Closing the loop holes surrounding riding, carrying, stacking and shunting require you to be very specific about how the two bodies can interact in away that almost requires you to state, "The only way they can interact is for one to jump on the back of the other mid-jump." Obviously this is unsatisfactory as it effectively requires you to reveal the answer.

Here is how I would change it to work both here and anywhere else:

Rabbit is crossing a river hopping from one stone to another. A sudden surge of water washes away all but the stone rabbit is on. It is a little too far to either jump forward or jump back. Rabbit is trapped and would surely drown if she tried to swim across.

A wolf appears on the river bank licking its licks and says, "I'm going to jump over there and eat you little rabbit."

How does Rabbit escape?

The solution is about the only thing that remains unchanged. The change in setting removes the need for a long list of things that can't be done. By making the two bodies combatant rather than cooperative you avoid problems around riding and carrying, and it no longer matters if the wolf dies in the process.

The puzzle is somewhat easier as it is is now clear that the two bodies are travelling in opposite directions but that is the price to be paid for making the puzzle less open ended.