On Jan 20, 5:41 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Ever since I learnt to program I've always loved writing solvers for > the Countdown numbers game problem in different languages
Ok so here's a challenge I just thought of: What is (or are) the set of 6 starting numbers which are such that the smallest target they can't reach is maximal? E.g for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 the smallest target they can't reach is 284: 100 = ((5*4)*(3+2)) 101 = (5+((4*3)*(6+2))) 102 = (((6*5)+4)*3) 103 = ((5*((6*4)-3))-2) ... 280 = ((5*(4+3))*(6+2)) 281 = (((5*(4+3))*(6+2))+1) 282 = ((4+((6*5)*3))*(2+1)) 283 = (3+(((5*4)*2)*(6+1))) 284 : can't be done For 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, the smallest unreachable target is 796 (and there are five others: 829, 956, 961, 964, 991). For 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, the smallest is 807 (but there are 23 others) Time to go to bed :) -- Arnaud PS: apologies if I got the results wrong... -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
