in reply to (redmist) RE: RE: RE: Stat Crack?
in thread Stat Crack?

One name is correct. /me idly wonders about the math on how many guesses it would take to get it right if i keep answering and if the recursion routine that nests the nodes would break before redmist got the whole thing....

"sometimes when you make a request for the head you don't
want the big, fat body...don't you go snickering."
                                         -- Nathan Torkington UoP2K a.k.a gnat

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RE: RE: (redmist) RE: RE: RE: Stat Crack?
by Blue (Hermit) on Nov 09, 2000 at 22:33 UTC
    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...

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