You could have simply said that you weren't interested.

I did. Both via /msg, and repeatedly in this thread. And I gave you my reasons why not.

[the heuristic] has found the optimal solution within 60 seconds for every random sampling
the C brute force solution to complete all 7,758,767,016 possible solutions in 12 minutes and 24 seconds.

So what value has the heuristic solution?

Nobody is going to have a need to solve these puzzles in such large numbers that waiting 15 minutes for the solution is a problem. So being able to say that this heuristic may give you a solution in 60 seconds isn't useful. For a heuristic to be useful there has to be some mathematical basis for believing it can be trusted, as with the Rabin modification of the Miller primality test.

Had you once in your replies offline or on, indicated that you accepted the need for a reasonable performance brute force mechanism, then I might have been interested in that. As that, as a whole or in parts, could be useful for tackling other, more practical NP hard problems.

For example, I've a C implementation of the combs() iterator (probably better named arrangements?) from my original post, that cycles through the 7.75e9 arrangements in 45 seconds. (Single threaded). And with suitable pre-encoding of the words, I'm reasonably confident that the scoring of those arrangements shouldn't much more that double that time. If I'm right, and the brute forcing can be achieved in under 2 minutes, what value a sub 60 second maybe?

With threading, that might be shortened further, and that's something that's right up my alley.


Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
"Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."

In reply to Re^9: Challenge: Letter Power by BrowserUk
in thread Challenge: Letter Power by Tanktalus

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