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From: joe@smu.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.math
Subject: Re: Games Magazine - (nf)
Message-ID: <14100007@smu.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Jul-84 11:50:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: smu.14100007
Posted: Wed Jul  4 11:50:00 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Jul-84 00:15:48 EDT
References: <498@whuxle.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:whuxle:-49800:smu:14100007:000:1387
Nf-From: smu!joe    Jul  4 10:50:00 1984

#R:whuxle:-49800:smu:14100007:000:1387
smu!joe    Jul  4 10:50:00 1984


A few months ago in Games (the cover had a gumball machine on it)
there was the following contest:
      Given five groups of three letters each, find five letter words
      such that exactly one letter comes from each group.
This problem is fairly easily computer-solvable.  Unlike many contests in
Games and others, this problem has a relatively small number of
possible answers (3^5 * 5! = 29160, assuming all 15 letters are
distinct, which they weren't). The prize was $1 for each valid word.
I prepared a list of valid words (at least words in /etc/dict/words),
but never sent it in.  I don't recall how words I came up with, nor
do I know if the contest results have been published.  Actually, there
was sufficient time given that several people, given parts of the
sorted ``word'' list, could have checked them against the official
contest dictionary and produced the most possible words.

The author of the letter to Games said that it would be impossible for
them to prohibit the use of computers for solving contests.  This may
be true, but several contests I have seen elsewhere explicitly exclude
the use of a computer.  For the most part, Games needn't worry about
this, since most of their contests are aimed at human intuition, not
``number-crunching solutions'', unlike the one cited above.

                        Joe Ramey
                        ...!convex!smu!joe