Before reading, I thought they had found a faster sequence of disk transfers (stop the press etc) -- but it turns out the article is just about generating the same sequence of moves in less time, given the C compilers of late-90s workstations.
In the particular case of the Hanoi problem, I don't see droppable premises (except "you can only move one disk at a time" -- drop that and there may be an O(1) solution).