This is really cool. However, I didn't realize the diagrams were interactive in my first reading, leading me to think this page was far more boring than it really was. I'd suggest a quick caption on the interactive ones like, "Move your mouse in the circle to see the flags move around live." Just to help out soft-headed folks like myself.

Great suggestion, I'll try to make that more clear in the future. Thanks for the feedback!

As someone with rudimentary programming experience this is cool. I've had an enthusiasm for D3.js projects but haven't been able to come across an applicable "this is how you get started" example. Well done.

Side note: I downloaded the gist and encountered some odd behavior when I opened the .html file in my browser (Chrome on Mac OSX). The treasure chest is stuck near the top of the circle (regardless of cursor position) and one of the flags is missing its connecting lines. Just thought you should know.

Thanks for the note on the gist, I was editing that as I went along writing the post and obviously have mistakenly made an edit somewhere. Will fix it up ASAP.

EDIT: Now Fixed.

There's an excellent program called 'Geogebra' (google it). It takes about a minute to reconstruct the pirate problem; see file here: http://ubuntuone.com/37Y5UbvN6wqbYOWYPcict2, you can move around the point of the grave and see how the point of the treasure reacts (or doesn't)

The bl.ocks link (http://bl.ocks.org/azundo/5928203) given at the top of the article does not actually contain the finished product. This was rather confusing for me since I tried playing around with it before reading the article.

Whoops! Thanks for catching that, must have made a mistake on an edit somewhere, I'll fix it up.

EDIT: Now fixed.

Isn't there two potential locations depending on prospective? Moving the grave above the two trees changes which tree is on the right/left.

Yep, see the One More Thing section near the end.

This is cool as hell.