The Nineteenth Byte

The 15 Puzzle is a famous puzzle involving sliding 15 tiles around on a 4x4 grid. Starting from a random configuration, the goal is to arrange the tiles in the correct order. Here is an example of a solved 15 Puzzle: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 Each move on the puzzle is of th...

except the rules are substantially different (it's not a duplicate)

Doorknob

So, post it in the sandbox?

durron597

however, the reason i'm not just posting it is because of scoring.

fah! i'm impatient :)

Doorknob

1:22 AM

:P

Okay, then describe it here?

durron597

and also the tiebreaker is going to be "date of last edit" and i don't want to give people an advantage

if they read the sandbox

anyway, i want to score based on "fewest moves to solve"

Doorknob

That seems like it would give people an unfair advantage anyway (timezones and whatnot)

durron597

but the problem is, how do i ensure that people are competing on an even footing

Doorknob

Hmm.

durron597

could run all the solutions 10000 times or something and see who has lowest score, but that's subject to luck

and also, i have to be able to run them all, which i don't want to do

Doorknob

1:24 AM

You could always restrict to a subset of "common" languages, for the language problem.

durron597

so now i'm thinking, post like 7 puzzles, and the winner is the person with the lowest score

but stipulate that it has to support all possible puzzles

Doorknob

And 10000 times is probably enough to eliminate luck.

durron597

could even say that if it seems to be special casing for the provided puzzles it's disqualified

also, i don't want include runtime in the scoring

though maybe i should, because someone could just code simple BFS and that would get opt every time

Doorknob

... yeah, this would probably benefit from being in the sandbox for a while.

durron597

starting to agree

if you were me, would you post the exact rules of the puzzle? i think "being similar to fifteen" is close enough

and then say i'll post the exact rules of the puzzle when it graduates

Doorknob

1:28 AM

It's a common enough puzzle that you probably don't need to post the rules, at least in the sandbox.

durron597

Hmm... I just realized something

Doorknob

?

durron597

there are only 415,800 possible puzzle combinations

TheDoctor

That becomes less impressive with bigger numbers.

durron597

maybe the puzzle should be "attempt to solve all 415,800" in optimal time

Doorknob

1:33 AM

... hmm.

TheDoctor

There are only 35823465723648756347652987641706348756038745601374650817236458703640857623408756‌20837465081736458706304875643 possible combinations

Maybe, you should choose 100 random starting points and use those same ones on each program

Doorknob

10 mins ago, by durron597

so now i'm thinking, post like 7 puzzles, and the winner is the person with the lowest score

^ same idea

Geobits

Basically the same as the recent flood-paint one, no?

Give a few hundred/thousand test cases, lowest total moves wins.

That seemed to work out well, imo.

durron597

0

A: Proposed Question Sandbox - Mark XII

Game similar to the Fifteen Puzzle Because I may factor in "date of solution posted" as a tiebreaker, I don't want to say the exact rules in the sandbox... but the exact rules aren't the reason I'm putting this in the sandbox. Basically, the challenge will be to "solve the given puzzle(s)" in t...

Geobits

To be clear, do you mean there are only 415k starting positions or only that many possible positions at all?

durron597

1:40 AM

the latter

as i said, it's like 15

Geobits

Ah, that may indeed be a problem then

I wasn't sure how much like 15 it was

Doorknob

Perhaps you could upgrade to 24? :P

durron597

@Doorknob it's different enough from 15 for that question not to make sense... the only way i could really explain it is to actually post the rules

Geobits

> For larger versions of the n-puzzle, finding a solution is easy, but the problem of finding the shortest solution is NP-hard.[1][2] For the 15-puzzle, lengths of optimal solutions range from 0 to 80 single-tile moves[3] or 43 multi-tile moves;[4] the 8-puzzle always can be solved in no more than 31 single-tile moves or 24 multi-tile moves (integer sequence A087725). The multi-tile metric counts subsequent moves of the empty tile in the same direction as one.[4]

The number of possible positions of the 24-puzzle is 25!/2 ≈ 7.76×1024 which is too many to calculate God's number. In 2011, a l…

durron597

just have to trust me until then

Geobits

1:42 AM

From wikipedia

TARDIS

TARDIS has materialized at Sunday, May 11 at 07:43:28 PM

Geobits

Well, I suppose without the rules we can't be of much help? It's like the 15, but enough unlike it that larger n doesn't make sense. I'm not sure what to make of that.

TARDIS

Oh, hello TARDIS

Geobits

Umm.... yay... the TARDIS is back...

Doorknob

So who thinks that the non-challenge post should become policy and faq now?

Still nothing has changed

TheDoctor

1:45 AM

I say yes to faq

Geobits

If you're looking for more input, you may want to wait until at least tomorrow before [faq]ing it. Lots of people don't visit on the weekend, and it was only posted yesterday.

Doorknob

Ah, good point, weekend.

Geobits

I think it's fine, though :)

TheDoctor

What about the one we did today?

Doorknob

On a related note, there are only 6 code-trolling questions left that need to be decided on.

TARDIS

1:46 AM

Oh, hello hosch250

durron597

I agree with everything said in the last several posts

hosch250

Hi.

Doorknob

... this greeting message may get slightly annoying, @TheDoctor

hosch250

Oops, I didn't realize that was a bot.

Doorknob

Lol

TheDoctor

1:47 AM

6

Q: How do we deal with novel emerging/recurring challenge types?

Recently, there has been a new type of challenge introduced called duct-tape-coding. Fears have been brought up that, like code-trolling, this challenge type may spawn posts that are extremely trivial or similar to the first one, relying only on the challenge type to be an interesting question. ...

discussion policy faq-proposed

Geobits

@Doorknob I noticed your message on my [code-troll]. You don't need to wait the 24 hours, fire away at it. That's 10 rep I won't miss.

TheDoctor

I'll ungreet later

hosch250

@Doorknob I think the non-challenge question is good too, not that my opinion counts.

TheDoctor

I will actally gain like 20 rep if you delete all code-trolls

Doorknob

@Geobits A moderator told me in TL that I shouldn't delete immediately.

TheDoctor

1:49 AM

codegolf.stackexchange.com/help/badges/37/…

OOh

Geobits

Eh, ok. Doesn't matter to me either way. I wasn't sure what the 24 hour delay would be for. It's not like my impassioned plea to not delete it would make any difference :)

hosch250

I think this code-troll could be left: codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/16656/…

TheDoctor

Eh... At least lock it

Doorknob

@hosch250 Justification?

hosch250

It was very well specified - compared to most.

This should be deleted: codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/16639/…

TheDoctor

1:50 AM

Yes

hosch250

This too: codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/16615/…

I hate to say it, as I will lose 65 points, but this should go too: codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/16359/…

This is a more complex challenge, although not very well specified: codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/16327/…

TheDoctor

Yes&yes

and yes

}}big DELETE

TARDIS

 ▄▄▄▄▄     ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄  ▄▄        ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄  ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄  ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
 ██▀▀▀██   ██▀▀▀▀▀▀  ██        ██▀▀▀▀▀▀  ▀▀▀██▀▀▀  ██▀▀▀▀▀▀
 ██    ██  ██        ██        ██           ██     ██
 ██    ██  ███████   ██        ███████      ██     ███████
 ██    ██  ██        ██        ██           ██     ██
 ██▄▄▄██   ██▄▄▄▄▄▄  ██▄▄▄▄▄▄  ██▄▄▄▄▄▄     ██     ██▄▄▄▄▄▄
 ▀▀▀▀▀     ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀  ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀  ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀     ▀▀     ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀

hosch250

}}listcommands

TARDIS

@hosch250 Commands: help, listcommands, random, fortune, xkcd, stats, no, big, die

hosch250

1:52 AM

}}die

TARDIS

@hosch250 TARDIS dematerializing...

@hosch250 [executing as sudo] hosch250 is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported

TheDoctor

Ok, please don't play with it in here.

hosch250

Sorry.

TheDoctor

Soon i will move over to chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/14447/the-tardis-console

hosch250

I hate to take 105 points from this guy, but this should go too: codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/16479/…

TheDoctor

1:53 AM

Yes please

durron597

I'm sure this has been discussed

but are you keeping them tagged for historical significance

or just nuking

hosch250

@Doorknob Can you please un-star those }}big whatever things?

They look atrocious.

durron597

e.g. meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9134/jon-skeet-facts/9182#9182

TheDoctor

@hosch :(

Doorknob

@hosch250 Alright, doing that now.

TheDoctor

1:55 AM

TARDIS very sad

Geobits

@Doorknob Can you please ban those }}big whatever things? They look atrocious.

Doorknob

Sorry for being afk, dog barking at me

hosch250

@TheDoctor They look fine in the chatroom, just not starred.

TheDoctor

Moved to TARDIS console @hosch chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/14447/the-tardis-console

Doorknob

@durron597 Yes, locking the ones that aren't being deleted.

durron597

1:57 AM

@Doorknob the two that @hosch250 just lamented about should be historical significance locked

imo.

possibly changed to CW the way they've done similar things on SO

hosch250

@durron597 Which two?

Doorknob

@hosch250 That one got mostly "delete" votes on the poll, though.

hosch250

Huh?

Doorknob

I will annotate my todo list in the purge room.

durron597

okay just forget everything, you guys have done a ton of work on this already, just ignore me

:D

Doorknob

2:27 AM

Current status of code-trolling: 8 exist, 3 scheduled for deletion, 1 to be retagged, 4 undecided posts remaining.

And with that, I'm going to bed. Bye all :)

DoorknobChatbot

New post! Golf the Pigeonhole sort

DoorknobChatbot

2:45 AM

New post! NUM + BER = PLAY challenge

TheDoctor

Night

TheDoctor

3:25 AM

Going to bed myself...

I'll leave TARDIS running in the Console

Howard

5:28 AM

8

Q: Reverse order of words in a string inplace

The Task You are given a mutable string that matches [a-z]+( [a-z]+)*. You must mutate it into the string which contains the same words, but in reverse order, so that "hello there everyone" becomes "everyone there hello". You are not permitted to use more than a constant amount of additional me...

code-challenge algorithm

This is an interesting one. Any algorithm with score<2 I can think of needs at least as much additional memory as we have number of words in the input string.

Does anybody know if this is a problem known in the literature?

Quincunx

7:06 AM

Saw this question:

3

Q: Does a Cubone kill its own mother?

It's pretty common knowledge that Cubone wields the skull of it's deceased mother. But how does the mother die? Do Cubone's kill their mother at birth, or do they just die after giving birth?

pokemon

Clearly, Cubones wear the skulls of their mothers (guess they didn't get to give their mothers something for Mothers Day)

But then how can the population of Cubones be stable?

Since there are both male and female cubones at a rate of 50/50, this would mean that the population of cubones halves every generation.

Just an interesting thought.

Geobits

12:47 PM

reddit.com/r/pokemonconspiracies/comments/15ev3p/…

TheDoctor

Morning

Doorknob

So code-trolling is almost dead

in The Great Code Trolling Purge of 2014, 10 hours ago, by Doorknob

Current status of code-trolling: 5 exist unlocked and undeleted, 5 scheduled for deletion, 0 to be retagged, 0 undecided posts remaining.

TheDoctor

yay

m.buettner

sweet

undergroundmonorail

I know that Doorknob's post was unrelated, but this is still really funny to me.

TheDoctor

12:58 PM

doorknobchatbot == removed???

Doorknob

Thanks for your input, @Turion! As I said, this post is... different - it does have many votes, but the community wants (in the poll and as expressed in chat) it to be deleted, as it is very underspecified. If you'd like, you can join us in chat now to discuss this. — Doorknob ♦ 19 secs ago

Turion

Doorknob, thanks for your friendly invitation

Doorknob

Oh hi @Turion!

So, here's the post in question:

Turion

I appreciate your effort of bringing codegolf and its meta together

Doorknob

21

Q: How do I split a string??? Help plz? (code trolling)

My homework assignment is take a string and split it into pieces at every new line. I have no idea what to do! Please help! Note: This is a code-trolling question. Please do not take the question and/or answers seriously. More information here.

code-trolling

Turion

1:04 PM

The question I asked there is not particularly specific, but also wasn't meant to be as codegolf was just emerging with an emphasis on creative and free answers

Doorknob

Yes, that is true. However, policy has changed, and these types of questions are no longer encouraged.

Turion

My main point I wanted to say is that it appears that many users of codegolf seem to have a different opinion as many users of meta, as these questions and answers are popular

Doorknob

I was considering a historical lock instead, but the community seemed intent on deleting this one, as it was basically one sentence.

Turion

There are many unpopular code-trolling questions as well, and they have been downvoted, together with bad answers

Doorknob

@Turion Yes, this has been discussed to death on meta - just because they're popular doesn't mean we want them.

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