My first thougfht is that it's like a game of MastermindTM, but then I realized that we know the positions, just not the choices, and that there is a lot more possibilities. The last name in particular is probably the hardest. Since that is most likely not to be in a list of names, I would probably work it out last. Or perhaps do a different list, such as a local phone book for the area. 8)

If I was to write this as a Perl program, I would start with a reasonable dictionary of names, find ones with no matches so that I have a "filler" when I only want to check a single position, and then start going through it.

One algorithm would be to do five new options that match the initial letter at once to cover the boggling number of choices, and then use filler to determine which are correct. This is quicker then one name and four fillers, and as we identify correct parts we can remove those from the change in to zero in on the correct name.

However, a better algorithm then this brute force approach would probably be better. Any ideas?

=Blue
...you might be eaten by a grue...


In reply to RE: RE: (redmist) RE: RE: RE: Stat Crack? by Blue
in thread Stat Crack? by royalanjr

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.