A little while ago, I wrote a PPCG challenge under the kolmogorov-complexity tag, which frankly bombed.

Briefly, the challenge was to output a series of names. The first half of names were fixed but entrants could choose their own set of names for the second half under fairly loose restrictions.

When I wrote the challenge, I had imagined that entries would use encoding tricks like looking for every other capital letter as a separator with a special rule for names starting "Mc", or maybe the second half of names would all be rearrangements of the names used in the first half.

What I got, which should have been obvious in hindsight, is one answer that was essentially a bunch of bytes piped into a decompression function. No effort was made to find names with patterns that could be expanded by code, just a quick decompression and we're done.

I can't blame the author of that entry for doing it this way, but I got the feeling that this entry kinda sucked the fun out of the challenge. It was like we're taking part in a sprinting race and one entrant noticed that the rules allow you to use a motorcycle.

Thinking about kolmogorov-complexity in general, that style of piping bytes into a decompression function would work for a lot of these challenges, which would take away the fun of the challenge. So, what if we made a general rule, that use of zip-esque decompression functions go against the spirit of kolmogorov-complexity?

Thoughts?

A little while ago, I wrote a PPCG challenge under the kolmogorov-complexity tag, which frankly bombed.

Briefly, the challenge was to output a series of names. The first half of names were fixed but entrants could choose their own set of names for the second half under fairly loose restrictions.

When I wrote the challenge, I had imagined that entries would use encoding tricks like looking for every other capital letter as a separator with a special rule for names starting "Mc", or maybe the second half of names would all be rearrangements of the names used in the first half.

What I got, which should have been obvious in hindsight, is one answer that was essentially a bunch of bytes piped into a decompression function. No effort was made to find names with patterns that could be expanded by code, just a quick decompression and we're done.

I can't blame the author of that entry for doing it this way, but I got the feeling that this entry kinda sucked the fun out of the challenge. It was like we're taking part in a sprinting race and one entrant noticed that the rules allow you to use a motorcycle.

Thinking about kolmogorov-complexity in general, that style of piping bytes into a decompression function would work for a lot of these challenges, which would take away the fun of the challenge. So, what if we made a general rule, that use of zip-esque decompression functions go against the spirit of kolmogorov-complexity?

Thoughts?