Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Question

This "sandbox" is a place where Code Golf users can get feedback on prospective challenges they wish to post to main. This is useful because writing a clear and fully specified challenge on your first try can be difficult, and there is a much better chance of your challenge being well received if you post it in the sandbox first.

Sandbox FAQ

Posting

To post to the sandbox, scroll to the bottom of this page and click "Answer This Question". Click "OK" when it asks if you really want to add another answer.

Write your challenge just as you would when actually posting it, though you can optionally add a title at the top. You may also add some notes about specific things you would like to clarify before posting it. Other users will help you improve your challenge by rating and discussing it.

When you think your challenge is ready for the public, go ahead and post it, and replace the post here with a link to the challenge and delete the sandbox post.

Discussion

The purpose of the sandbox is to give and receive feedback on posts. If you want to, feel free to give feedback to any posts you see here. Important things to comment about can include:

• Parts of the challenge you found unclear
• Comments addressing specific points mentioned in the proposal
• Problems that could make the challenge uninteresting or unfit for the site

You don't need any qualifications to review sandbox posts. The target audience of most of these challenges is code golfers like you, so anything you find unclear will probably be unclear to others.

If you think one of your posts requires more feedback, but it's been ignored, you can ask for feedback in The Nineteenth Byte. It's not only allowed, but highly recommended! Be patient and try not to nag people though, you might have to ask multiple times.

It is recommended to leave your posts in the sandbox for at least several days, and until it receives upvotes and any feedback has been addressed.

Other

Search the sandbox / Browse your pending proposals

The sandbox works best if you sort posts by active.

To add an inline tag to a proposal, use shortcut link syntax with a prefix: [tag:king-of-the-hill]. To search for posts with a certain tag, include the name in quotes: "king-of-the-hill".

Answer 1

Create a program with "exact repetition" in its source code

The task is to create a program, with the following restrictions placed on the printable ASCII characters in the source code: choose some k > 0.

• Every non-alphabetic character has to appear exactly k times.
• Every alphabetic character has to appear at most k times.
  • This rule differs from the former in order to avoid boring dummy identifiers while still making it a challenge to choose good library functions to call.

Character set definitions used:

• Non-alphabetic characters are !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@[\]^_{|}~ and '`' (backtick).
• Alphabetic characters are ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.

Note that no restriction is placed on characters outside of the range of printable ASCII characters (including control codes, tabs, newlines, higher unicode codepoints, etc).

What the program does is up to you; be creative. Some general guidelines:

• Programs that do something interesting might have better chances, although more impressive code structure (i.e. fewer comments) is also beneficial.
• Stuffing excess characters in comments is boring, and should be avoided/is discouraged.
• Dead/no-op code isn't terribly interesting either, but is probably unavoidable and at least has to conform to the language's grammar.

This is popularity-contest: whatever has the most upvotes at Feb 1, 2014 gets accepted as the winner.

---

Example answer (C)

#
#
/*$$@``*/_[]={9.};main() {printf("He%clo \
world!%c\
",2^7&!8.&~1|~-1?4|5?0x6C:48:6<3>2>=3<++_[0],'@'^79-5);}

Prints "Hello world!" (adapted from an answer to another question). Probably wouldn't score a lot (since what it does isn't terribly interesting). Each of the non-alphabetic characters appear exactly twice, and no alphabetic character appears more than twice.

---

For meta: I want to post this, but I'm worrying that "do something interesting" might give too little guidance and the question won't receive many answers.. thoughts? Is it good as-is, or should I come up with some task that one should be required to implement (and possibly change the ruling to code-challenge, with length + 2^(characters-in-comments) as the score)?

Answer 2

This is my first try at writing a challenge. Please let me know how I can improve it.

Roman Calculator

code-golf

Create a basic calculator for Roman numerals.

Requirements

• Supports +,-,*,/
• Input and output should expect only one prefix per symbol (i.e. 3 can't be IIV because there is two I's before V)
• Input and output should be left to right in order of value, starting with the largest (i.e. 19 = XIX not IXX, 10 is larger than 9)
• Left to right, no operator precedence, as if you were using a hand calculator.
• Supports whole positive numbers input/output between 1-4999 (no need for V̅)
• No libraries that do roman numeral conversion for you

For you to decide

• Case sensitivity
• Spaces or no spaces on input
• What happens if you get a decimal output. Truncate, no answer, error, etc..
• What to do for output that you can't handle. Negatives or numbers to large to be printed.

Extra Credit

• -20 - Handle up to 99999 or larger (numbers with a vinculum)

Sample input/output

XIX + LXXX                 (19+80)
XCIX

XCIX + I / L * D + IV      (99+1/50*500+7)
MIV

The shortest code wins.

Answer 3

Create a calendar

popularity-contest calendar

We all know HDD-space is precious and bandwidth is expensive, therefore it is best to reduce the size of your executables. Let's start with your calendar:

Your task is to build a calendar app in at most 512 bytes. The calendar must at least support the following features, but additional features may gain you additional upvotes:

• It must be able to show the current month with the current day highlighted
• The user must be able to find out the week day of each day

Rules:

• Maximum code length is 512 bytes (counted as UTF-8 without BOM)
• You may subtract the bootstrapping code (i.e. int main(int argc, char **argv) in C or <?php in PHP) and imports from the final size to allow for more verbose languages to be in
• You may use standard time / date functions of your programming language, as long as they don't allow you to output a ready to use calendar
• No network access (I said bandwidth is expensive!)
• Voters decide on the amount of features / look and feel / creativity

---

This needs a tag for the size restriction, any suggestions?

Answer 4

Hi, first time golf questioner, hopefully I'm doing it right!

Maths Trade Calculator

A maths trade (or "math" trade if you prefer) is a way of calculating complex trades of arbitrary items in a circle of participants where not all participants want all items.

X participants have an item they would like to trade. Each participant is assigned a unique number, and provides a list of (numbers identifying) the items they would willingly trade their item for. They may provide an empty list (i.e. they would rather not trade).

Input

X lines, one for each participant, comprising a unique number identifying them, followed by a colon, then a comma-separated-list of numbers identifying other items that they would trade for. e.g.:

1:2,3,4
2:
3:1,4
4:2

The numbers identifying the participants will not necessary be in order, nor will they necessarily be 1 to X. You may assume that they will be numeric.

This string can be in STDIN, or an argument to a function, or similar and can be followed by a new-line or not, whatever the coder prefers.

Output

One or more trade loops in which all participants are making trades they're happy with. Each loop should be on a new line and comprise a participant number, followed by "->", followed by the participant they should give their item to, then another "->", and another participant number etc, until the loop is closed and the last participant number matches the first one. Another line is added with the number of completed trades. e.g.:

1->3->1
2

Participants for which no valid trade is possible are omitted.

Output can be via STDOUT, or returned as a string, or something else, with an optional final new-line.

Trade rules

1. A participant may not be involved in more than one trade
2. A participant may not receive an item that they didn't want
3. All loops must be closed
4. Maximum number of possible trades should be completed (i.e. no submitting a zero-trade output and claiming it's valid). If there are multiple permutations, pick whichever you prefer.

This is a code golf challenge, so shortest working code wins.

Some more example inputs and possible outputs

1

1:2,3,4,5
2:3,5,7,9
3:1,2,5,6,10
4:
5:1,2,3,4,10
6:5,7,9
7:3,6,9,10
8:1,2,4,10
9:1
10:9

1->9->10->3->1
7->2->5->6->7
8

For instance, in this trade: 9 stated that he would accept 1's item in a trade, 10 stated that he would accept 9's item, 3 would accept 10's and 1 would accept 3's. In the second loop, 2 receives 7's item, 5 receives 2's, 6 receives 5 and 7 receives 6's. (Other outputs are possible from this input.)

2

1:2
4:
2:3
5:1
3:4

0

3

1:5,9
5:1
9:1

1->5->1
2

1->9->1 is also valid in this case, but both cannot be completed. Either is acceptable.

Thanks for reading guys! Let me know if there are any improvements I can make.

Answer 5

Design and Solve a Maze

(this question on hold while the details are ironed out)

---

Your task is to play the roles of both characters in this scene from Inception. In it, Cobb gives Ariadne a challenge:

You have two minutes to design a maze that takes one minute to solve.

Some liberties will be taken on that description. Most importantly, this challenge is not time-based, rather scores are based on the effectiveness of your mazes and maze-solvers.

I apologize for the many edits to this challenge as we iterate towards an easy and fair format..

Part I: Maze format

All mazes are square. A cell in the maze is represented as a zero-indexed tuple row column.

Walls are represented by two binary strings: one for horizontal walls (which block movement between rows) and vertical walls (vice versa). On an NxN maze, there are Nx(N-1) possible walls of each type. Let's take a 3x3 example where the cells are labelled:

A   B | C
   ---
D | E   F
   ---
G   H | I

all possible vertical walls are: AB BC DE EF GH HI. Translated into a string, the walls shown are 011001 for vertical walls and 010010 for horizontal walls. Also, by "binary string" I mean "the characters '0' and '1'".

The full maze format is a string which contains, in this order:

• width
• start cell tuple
• end cell tuple
• horizontal walls
• vertical walls

For example, this maze:

   0 1 2 3 4
   _________
0 | |  E|  _|
1 |  _|_|_  |
2 |_ _ _  | |
3 |  _ _  | |
4 |____S|___|
start:(4,2)
end:(0,2)

is formatted to this:

5
4 2
0 2
00001011101110001100
10100110000100010010

Part II: The Architect

The Architect program creates the maze. It must play by the rules and provide a valid maze (one where a solution exists, and the end is not on top of the start).

input via stdin: Two positive integers:

size [random seed]

Where size will be in [15, 50]. You are encouraged to make use of the random seed so that matches can be replayed, although it is not required.

output to stdout: A valid size x size (square) maze using the format described in Part I. "valid" means that a solution exists, and the start cell is not equal to the end cell.

The score of an Architect on a given maze is

   # steps taken to solve
------------------------------
max(dist(start,end),(# walls))

So architects are rewarded for complex mazes, but penalized for each wall built (this is a substitute for Ariadne's time restriction). The dist() function ensures that a maze with no walls does not get an infinite score. The outside borders of the maze do not contribute to the wall count.

Part III: The Solver

The Solver attempts to solve mazes generated by others' architects. There is a sort of fog-of-war: only walls adjacent to visited cells are included (all others are replaced with '?')

input via stdin: the same maze format, but with '?' where walls are unknown, an extra line for the current location, and a comma-separated list of valid choices from this location. (This is a big edit that is meant to make it simpler to write a maze-parsing function)

example (same as the above 5x5 maze after taking one step left)

5
4 2
0 2
???????????????011??
????????????????001?
4 1
4 0,4 2

Which corresponds something like this, where ? is fog:

   0 1 2 3 4
   _________
0 |????E????|
1 |?????????|
2 |?????????|
3 | ?_?_????|
4 |__C_S|_?_|

output to stdout: One of the tuples from the list of valid choices

Each Solver's score is the inverse of the Architect's score.

Part IV: King of the Hill

Architects and Solvers are given separate scores, so there could potentially be two winners.

Each pair of architects and solvers will have many chances to outwit each other. Scores will be averaged over all tests and opponents. Contrary to code golf conventions, highest average score wins!

I intend for this to be ongoing, but I can't guarantee continued testing forever! Let's say for now that a winner will be declared in one week.

Part V: Testing

I have written a Python testing kit which includes a Maze class for parsing and writing in the proper formats, as well as an example architect/solver pair: Daedalus and the Minotaur

Available on both Dropbox and GitHub

Part VI: Submitting

• I maintain veto power over all submissions - cleverness is encouraged, but not if it breaks the competition or my computer! (If I can't tell what your code does, I will probably veto it)
• Come up with a name for your Architect/Solver pair. Post your code along with instructions on how to run it.

Answer 6

Author note: I was thinking about new genres today, and I had an idea. What if there could be a challenge that encourages people to write good code, instead of the code-golf gibberish we all know? Here's a challenge that attempts to do that. (This could even possibly be a new-genre, which would be great because it would bring in a greater high quality question volume to the site, but I'm terrible at coming up with names. Feel free to suggest something in the comments.)

---

Build your own image editor

code-challenge application-building (?)

For this challenge, you will create the best GUI image editor that can perform the most tasks that you possibly can... from scratch.

Tasks and scoring

Here are the features / tasks used to score your program. Each task is worth a certain amount of points, which is specified in brackets before the task description. For convenience, each task will also be prefixed by an ID string so that you can refer to them when describing your program.

• [1 A] Brush tool: Simple, click and drag the mouse to draw freestyle doodles. Must draw a contiguous path.
  • [1 A1] Ability to change the brush size.
• {TODO: etc., add more}

Requirements

Your editor must conform to the following requirements:

• Must accept input via the mouse. Tools (brush, flood fill, etc.) can be switched and configured with keyboard shortcuts, by clicking icons with the mouse, through a menu, or however you would like.
• You may not use a single built-in function to accomplish one or more of the tasks. For example, if your language has a built-in image flood fill function, you may not use it and must build your flood fill from scratch.

Final score and voting

This is the syntax you should use to describe your score in your answer:

# {language}, {your score} score
<sup>(features implemented: {A, A1, ...})</sup>

    {your code here}

{description, comments, other notes, etc. here}

The amount of votes your post has (upvotes minus downvotes) will be multiplied by {TODO: figure out a good number} and added to your score. (Do not add this to the score in your post, since votes change constantly; I will add them manually.) Voters, please vote according to the following criteria:

• elegance and readability of the source code
• ease of use of the image editor and how powerful it is
• remember to sort by "active" so that you're voting for new answers too, and not just the top voted ones!

Answer 7

Help Joe Bloggs with his password hash

Joe was confidently using "password1" as his main password to all his accounts until one day he received an e-mail from fBay. His account has been compromised and he must change his password immediately. Yet worse, the attacker had access to all Joe's accounts. Being an engineer, Joe thought: What if I could hash somehow my password using a keyword? I wouldn't need to remember any passwords and I would have a different one for each account.

Joe then creates an algorithm - he takes the domain name as a key and creates the password for each of his account consisting of:

1. (<consonants><vowels>)(alternating case: lower, capital, lower...)
2. <number of consonants><number of vowels>
3. <sum of consonants and vowels numbers converted to a character on US Qwerty Keyboard>

Joe then opens an account on SO to create a new code golf challenge. He uses stackoverflow as a key to generate password:

1. sTcKvRfLwAoEo - consonants and vowels in alternating case
2. 94 - 9 consonants, 4 vowels
3. 9+4=13, 1+3=4, Shift+4=$

Therefore, Joe's password for stackoverflow is: sTcKvRfLwAoEo94$

Challenge

Create a shortest function to generate a password given the rules above. The code should accept a string type parameter d and return/display the generated password.

Rules

1. Only Latin letters from the input should be used. Any other characters should be ignored.
2. Minimum input length is 1 letter. (guys at q.com need passwords as well!)
3. Assume Y is a vowel
4. If vowels or consonants are missing, use 0 accordingly. E.g. input a would result in a01!
5. Shortest code wins

List of vowels and consonants

US qwerty keyboard

Answer 8

Diplomacy

king-of-the-hill

Note for Sandbox: I have not finished (or really started) the control program for this game, because I wanted to see if there was interest in it before I dedicated too much time to the project. that means that the rule are still up to be tweaked, so please leave a comment if you have a suggestion, and comment or vote if you are interested in seeing this happen.

Diplomacy is a complex strategy game, with a very entertaining combat system. This challenge will be to write a bot to compete in a simplified version of diplomacy combat.

Rules

Rounds

Countries (bots) will begin the game with 10 health, representing their remaining will to fight. The goal is to eliminate all other Nations by attacking them until they have 0 health.

The game will consist of several rounds. On the first round, all bots will receive 2 numbers as command line arguments: The first will be the total number of countries fighting, and the second will be their number in the list. Each following round, bots will receive a command line arguments containing the actions taken by each player last round and a list of all bots and their remaining health separated by commas, like so

 1:A2,2:S3,3:A4,4:A3 1:10,2:7,3:7,4:1

Each bot must then output a desired action, which is one two commands

1. Attack a player. This is done by printing the letter A followed by the number of the player you with to attack. For instance, A3
2. Support a player. This will give the player you support a boosted attack.

Resolving combat

After player have sent in their moves, attack scores will be calculated thus:

1. All players start with a strength of 1, and one point is added for every player supporting them. For instance, if the moves are 1:A3,2:S1,3:A2,4:S2 then bot 1 has strength 2, bot 2 has strength 2, bot three has strength 1, and bot 4 has strength 1.
2. After strength has been calculated, bots will deal damage based on their strength. The formula for damage is (Attacker's strength + 1) - (Defender's Strength) In the above situation, player 3 would take 2 damage and player 2 would take 0 damage. Note that, unlike regular diplomacy, attacking a supporter does not cut support.
3. All attack take place simultaneously and independently. This means that if player 1 and 2 both attack player 4, then they each deal 1 damage. If player 3 were to support player 4, then player 4 would take no damage.

Round Ends

After combat has been resolved, countries that have 0 health will no longer be able to attack or support. However, they still will be listed in the input with an health of 0. When a bot is eliminated, all remaining bots will receive a single point.

Ending the game

The game ends when either 100 turns have elapsed or only 2 or less players remain. At this point, the player with the highest remaining health is the winner and receives 1 point. In case of ties, all tied bots will revive 1 point. If all bots die on the same turn, this is not a tied victory, but mutually assured destruction, and all bots will receive 0 points.

Scoring

The control program will run 100 rounds of the game. The winner will be the country with the most points at the end of 100 rounds.

Code

You may write in any language I can reasonably compile. I will make an effort to compile odd languages, but make no promises as to my ability to do so. Please provide your source code, an explanation, and a command line command to run your program.

Notes

• You are allowed to write to a file. In fact, you are encouraged to do so.

• Because this is a game where cooperation is paramount, you are allowed to write bots that work together, with the following restriction:

  • Only two bots can be written by a single player to work together at a time.

• Standard Loopholes apply. You are not allowed to change the way the control program runs. If you provide invalid input to the control program, the program will just skip your turn. However, you are allowed to spy on other countries files, and all bot programs will be in the same folder at runtime. This is war, after all!

• I reserve the right to disqualify any country that takes more than about a second to run, or that tries a loophole not mention within. That being said, if it is sufficiently clever I will probably let it go.

I will have source code up soon for a sample country that will be competing, and will post the control program when I finish it.

Answer 9

Check GenericScript source code for compiler errors

Given the source code for a GenericScript program as input, parse the source code to check that it conforms to the syntax rules for the language. The syntax definition for GenericScript is below. If a part of the source code is found to be invalid, the program should output "Invalid syntax", otherwise it should output "Valid syntax".

Win Criteria

This is code golf. Shortest code wins.

Syntax

Source code will be considered to be valid if it matches the rule for "Program" below.

Program             = Sequence
Sequence            = Statement [Sequence]
Statement           = SequenceBlock | Assignment | If | While | Output
SequenceBlock       = "{" Sequence "}"
Assignment          = Identifier "=" (String | Bool); 
If                  = "if(" Bool ")" Statement ["else" Statement]
While               = "while(" Bool ")" Statement
Output              = "print(" String ");"
Identifier          = {Any sequence of alphanumeric characters prefixed with "var" }
Bool                = StringEquals | Identifier
StringEquals        = String "==" String
String              = StringConstant | OperatorConcat | Input | Identifier
StringConstant      = "'"StringContent"'"
StringContent       = Character [StringContent]
Character           = {Any character except for "'"}
OperatorConcat      = String "&" String
Input               = "read()"

Whitespace is defined as any sequence of the ascii characters 9, 10, 13 and 32. Whitespace characters are allowed between tokens but are not required.

Rules

1. The answer should be a complete program
2. Standard input/output allowed
3. Standard loopholes apply
4. Universally testable answers only

Test Input

Valid syntax:

print('What is your name?');
varInput = read();
print('Hello ' & varInput);

Invalid syntax:

if(read() == 'DoTask1')
  print('Executing you'r command');

Answer 10

Text Adventure Game

Objective

Your goal is to develop a complete text-based adventure game with the shortest code possible. The player navigates in a dungeon composed of rooms. The game objectives are to find the treasure, slain the dragon and rescue the princess.

Rules

A room description is as follows:

You are in <description>.
You can go <exits>
You see <object>      (optional)

• exits can be "north", "east", "west", "south".
• description can be "a adjective cavern", "a adjective room", "a adjective corridor", "a adjective hall", "a cell", "the dragon's lair".
• adjective can be "dark", "murky", "small", "large", "narrow", "gloomy", "huge", "strange", "tiny", "broad", "old".
• object can be "the princess", "the dragon", "a troll", "a goblin", "a sword", "gold", "a key", "a trunk".

Exit list must be comma-separated and end with "and". If there is no object in the room, the last line is omitted.

Example of valid description:

You are in a murky room.
You can go north, east and south.
You see a goblin.

The game accepts the following commands (case is ignored) :

• GO direction : direction can be NORTH, EAST, WEST, SOUTH
• TAKE item : item can be SWORD, GOLD, KEY
• KILL monster : monster can be DRAGON, TROLL, GOBLIN. The DRAGON and the TROLL can be killed only if the user has the SWORD. If he hasn't, he loses the game. The weak GOBLIN can be killed with bare hands. When a monster dies, he disappears from the room. When the GOBLIN dies, he drops a SWORD. When the TROLL dies, he drops a KEY.
• KISS person : person can be PRINCESS, DRAGON, TROLL, GOBLIN. Kissing the princess validates one of the objective of the game, and the princess disappears from the room. Kissing a monster results in player death.
• OPEN object : object can be TRUNK. If the player has the KEY, the TRUNK object disappears and is replaced with GOLD.

OBJECTS
The player can perform an action on an object only if the object is in current room. A room can contain only one object ; a given object can be found in only one room. At the beginning of the game, only the following objects are placed in the map : PRINCESS, DRAGON, TROLL, GOBLIN, TRUNK. Other objects are not yet created.

ACTIONS

• If an action cannot be performed (e.g. GO NORTH where there is no exit to the north, or TAKE DRAGON, or DANCE GANGNAM STYLE), the message "Sorry, I can't do that" must be displayed.
• If an action can be performed, the message "OK" and the current room description should be displayed.
• You can read game commands from console or as a program parameter, as you wish.

MAP
The dungeon should have at least 30 rooms. The dungeon should not contains a series of more than 5 exits in the same direction. The exits between rooms must be consistent, e.g. if you go north from room #1 to room #2, there must a south exit in room #2 leading back to room #1. Every room name should be unique. There must be at least one room of each kind (hall, cavern, corridor...)

• A hall has at least 3 exits.
• A corridor can have only 2 exits.
• The cell has only one exit.
• There is only one dragon's lair and only one cell, containing respectively the dragon and the princess.

GAME END
The game ends when the player has been killed, or when he has taken the gold, slain the dragon and kissed the princess.

• If the player dies, the message "You have been killed by X !" is displayed, with X being the name of the monster.
• If the player wins, the message "Well done adventurer ! you've conquered the dungeon." is displayed.

Player should not be able to win the game in less than 40 turns.

Example

You are in a murky room.
You can go north, east and south.
You see a goblin.
> KILL GOBLIN
Ok.
You are in a murky room.
You can go north, east and south.
You see a sword.
> TAKE SWORD
Ok.
You are in a murky room.
You can go north, east and south.
> GO NORTH
Ok.
You are in a narrow corridor.
You can go south and east.  

Scoring

The shortest code wins.

Answer 11

Simulate a Quantum Circuit

Work-in-progress until I can make sure I know what I am doing and can finish the spec. code-golf or maybe advanced-code-golf

---

Quantum computers are the way of the future! Why wait, when you can simulate one now?

Your mission is to determine the output of a quantum circuit given its input and a diagram of logic gates.

Details

You will simulate a single quantum register and apply a series of quantum logic gates to it. A quantum register is a group of qubits. The state of a register is described by a vector of 2^N complex numbers, where N is the number of qubits in the register.

a|000>
b|001>
c|010>
d|011>
e|100>
f|101>
g|110>
h|111>

Above is a representation of a 3-qubit register. Each letter (a b c etc.) represents a complex number. There is an addition restriction that:

|a|^2 + |b|^2 + |c|^2 + |d|^2 + |e|^2 + |f|^2 + |g|^2 + |h|^2 = 1

Quantum gates

Gates are represented by a 2^N x 2^N square unitary matrix, where N is the number of input qubits. All quantum gates have the same number of outputs and inputs, since they neither create nor destroy qubits, they modify them.

A common quantum gate is called the Hadamard gate and acts on a single qubit. The matrix [H] looks like this:

1/Sqrt(2)  1/Sqrt(2)
1/Sqrt(2)  -1/Sqrt(2)

If we let [R] represent the following 1-qubit register:

0.6|0>
O.8|1>

Then the application of the gate is represented by [H][R] and gives the following result:

7*Sqrt(2)/10|0>
 -Sqrt(2)/10|1>

It is still true that the sum of the squares of the absolute values is equal to 1.

(TODO: explain how to apply gates to larger registers)

Measurement

Measurement collapses the state of the quantum register.

(Todo: Explain how measurement works)

Input

Output

Answer 12

BS

king-of-the-hill

The goal of this challenge is to implement an AI for the game of BS, also known as Bull Shit, Cheat, Bluff, and numerous other names.

The game is outlined in this wikipedia article.

The Rules of the Game

For the purposes of this challenge, the game will work like this:

1. A standard 52-card deck is dealt out to the players
2. The current rank is set to Ace
3. The play order is randomized
4. The player holding the Ace of Hearts goes first
5. On each player's turn:
   1. The current player plays some number of cards
   2. The current player states how many of what rank they played
   3. Other players may declare 'BS'.
   4. If any player declares 'BS':
      1. All players are notified of which players declared 'BS'.
      2. The played cards are revealed to all players.
      3. If the played cards are inconsistent with the current player's statement:
         • The current player adds the played cards and all cards in the pile to their hand
      4. If the played cards are consistant with the current player's statement:
         • The last player to declare 'BS' that round adds the played cards and pile to their hand.
   5. If no player declares 'BS':
      1. The played cards are added to the pile, without revealing them.
      2. If the played cards were inconsistant with the current player's statement, the current player may declare 'Peanut Butter'.
   6. If the current player has no cards in their hand, the current player wins.
   7. The current rank is incremented. (If the current rank is King, it becomes Ace.)

The Messaging Protocol

Play will be conducted via messages passed to the standard input and received from the standard output of each program. Each message will be terminated with a single newline character.

Cards

Card ranks are represented as one of A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, T, J, Q, or K. Card suits will be represented as one of S, C, H, or D. Cards are represented as the rank, followed immediately by a suit. For instance, the Ten of Clubs would be represented by TC, and the Three of Hearts would be represented by 3H.

A hand of cards will be represented as a space-delimited sequence of cards. For instance, a hand containing the Queen of Spades and the Six of Diamonds could be represented as QS 6D or 6D QS.

Player Identification

A player will be represented by their nickname, followed by a number from 0 to 32768, in parenthesis, formatted as an integer. This number is guaranteed to be unique within a particular game. A player's nickname must have at least one character, can have up to 32 characters, and may only include letters, numbers, and underscores. For instance, a player with nickname ExampleAI and ID number 16480 would be identified in the game as ExampleAI(16480).

When the game begins, each program will recieve a message containing their unique ID:

Unique ID: uniqueID

Each player will reply with their desired nickname:

Nickname: name

Names may contain only alphanumeric characters and underscores.

After all players have responded with their nickname, the standard play sequence begins.

Standard Play Sequence

When a player's turn begins, each player will receive a be given a list of the players and their card counts, in order of play:

Players: player[count], player[count], ... player[count]

Each player will be informed of the contents of their hands:

Hand: initial_hand

The current the player will then receive this message:

Your turn: current_rank 

The current player will reply with a space-separated list of of cards:

Play: list_of_cards

Once they have submitted their play, all players will receive the number of cards, formatted as an integer, along with the current rank:

Player player plays: nunber_of_cards x current_rank

Each other player may then declare BS on that play by sending any message up to 32 characters, containing the capital letters B and S, and otherwise only contains lowercase letters and spaces. So any of Bull Shit, Bananna Split or Bacon Sandwich would be acceptable.

During this period, the current player may declare Peanut Butter by sending any message up to 32 characters, as long as it contains the capital letters P and B, and otherwise only contains lowercase letters and spaces. So any of Peanut Butter, Pancake Batter or Polish Bacon would be acceptable.

In order to allow the game to move faster, if a player does not wish to declare either of these things, they must instead send:

Pass

After all players have responded, all players will receive a list of players who called BS, in the order they called it:

Called BS: player, player ... player

If no player called BS, this message will still be sent --- it just won't have any players listed. If any player did call BS, then all players will recieve:

Player player had played: list_of_cards

If they were bluffing, all players recieve:

Player player was bluffing.

And the current player receives:

Your bluff was called: list_of_cards_recieved

If they were not bluffing, all players recieve:

Player player was not bluffing.

Player last_player receives the pile.

The last player who called BS recieves this message:

You misjudged: list_of_cards_received

The list of cards received will contain, in reverse chronological order, the contents of each play since the last call. (Separate plays will not be delimited in the list.)

If no player declared BS, and the current player was bluffing and declared Peanut Butter, then all players recieve the message:

Player player was bluffing.

If the current player has no cards left in their hand, all players receive this message, and the game terminates:

Player player won!

Otherwise, the next player's turn begins.

---

Example Game

The following might be considered a typical (abbreviated) message transcript:

Unique ID: 16481
> Nickname: Alice
Players: Alice(16481)[18], Bob(16479)[17], Charlie(16480)[17]
Hand: 2D 7S AS TC 5S JS JC 3C 8H 9D 5D AH 7C 6C 4D KC KH KS
Your turn: A
> Play: AS 2D AH
Player Alice(16481) plays: 3 x A
> PB
Called BS:
Player Alice(16481) was bluffing.
Players: Bob(16479)[17], Charlie(16480)[17], Alice(16481)[15]
Hand: 7S TC 5S JS JC 3C 8H 9D 5D 7C 6C 4D KC KH KS
Player Bob(16479) plays: 2 x 2
> BS
Called BS: Alice(16481)
Player Bob(16479) had played: 2H 2C
Player Bob(16479) was not bluffing.
Player Alice(16481) takes the pile.
You misjudged: 2H 2C AS 2D AH
Players: Charlie(16480)[17], Alice(16481)[20], Bob(16479)[15]
Hand: 7S TC 5S JS JC 3C 8H 9D 5D 7C 6C 4D KC KH KS 2H 2C AS 2D AH
 .
 .
 .
Players: Alice(16481)[3], Bob(16479)[41], Charlie(16480)[8]
Hand: KC KH KS
Your turn: K
> Play: KC KH KS
Called BS: Charlie(16480), Bob(16479)
Player Alice(16481) was not bluffing.
Player Bob(16479) receives the pile.
Player Alice(16481) won!

Your implementation may be written in any language, provided that you, upon request, provide a link to a suitable free-as-in-freedom compiler or interpreter that I can download and run at no cost. You also need to provide a UNIX command that can start your program.

Sandbox Questions

I want to gauge the community's interest in my problem before finalizing the spec and writing the control program.

I also need to get some idea of what sort of time-limiting scheme would be reasonable. In order to be able to to a lot of runs, I will need to be able to ensure that each AI doesn't take too much time to make its decisions, or prevent a stuck AI from holding up a game. I also need to be able to ensure that there is no motivation to deliberately stall a game. For example, if an AI determines that it is very unlikely to win, it might stall in order to prevent the game from finishing.

I would also like feedback on the messaging protocol:

• Are there any additional messages that you think should be passed?
• Would it be more convenient/clear if one or more of them were formatted differently?
  • Would it be better to use a different format for the plays message?
  • Would it be better to use different words to help distinguish the plays and played messages?

Answer 13

Turn my keyboard into a piano code-golf music

I'm sure we've all thought "man, wouldn't it be cool if my keyboard played musical notes as I program?". Of course, the answer to that question is a resounding no.

Regardless, it's what you're going to make.

Input

Input will be given, in real-time, on the keyboard.

The keyboard mapping that you will use is given in the diagram below. This kind of layout is used by several music programs already.

You can see that the bottom row (Z, X, C, V, B... ., /) represents all of the white keys, and the black keys are added on the row above (S, D, G, H, J... L, ;). This is then repeated on the two rows above, except the notes are an octave higher.

The notes C5 to E5 are repeated both on the lower rows and the upper rows.

So, if the user were to input Q (or ,) on the keyboard, middle-C (C5) should play. Similarly, if they input B, G4 should play.

^{The diagram above is an edited form of an image found here.}

Output

The only output will be sound. The actual sound used is up to you (it could be a piano sample or the internal beeper), but it should output sound at the correct pitch.

The program should not terminate by itself - the user should be able to keep inputting notes until they get bored.

References

• A diagram of the US keyboard layout (for comparison with the image above) can be found here.
• A table of the frequencies of notes can be found here. The range of notes that you will be using are from C4 to E6, inclusive.

Rules and Disambiguation

• This is code-golf, so the shortest correct implementation wins.
• Input should be given in real-time (i.e. no pressing Enter between each inputted note).
  • There should be no greater than a 0.25 second delay between pressing a key and hearing the note.
• Only programs that have the notes correctly mapped to the QWERTY keyboard will be accepted.
• The only output should be sound. There should be nothing displayed (except for a mandatory console window or similar).
• Polyphony (multiple notes playing at once) is not part of the specification.
• The program should not terminate by itself - a user should be able to keep pressing keys and hearing notes until they decide to close it.
• The waveform outputted is not important (it can be a beep or a piano sound or whatever you like); the pitch, however, should be accurate.
  • The file size of any sound files used will not be counted in the bytecount.
  • Please link any sound files you use with your answer.

Meta

• There are probably some obvious things that I've forgot to explain - please point these out!
• Also let me know if any of the wording is confusing.
• I've assumed that the readers will at least know very basic music theory (e.g. that there are 12 semitones in an octave). Is this okay?
• "Polyphony is not part of the specification" - polyphony is not the focus of the program, and therefore shouldn't be a consideration when submitting answers (i.e. if the shortest implementation means that one note will stop when a new note is played, then that's fine). Is this acceptable?
• Should I exclude the use of any external libraries that are designed to play sound or designed to repeat a function at regular intervals? Should I count sound file size in the score? I'm worried that having either of these would limit the possible entries to those that can use the internal beep (so, C/C++, C#, Python, Java?...).
• Another problem may be portability, or the lack thereof (e.g. C/C++ using the Windows API to access the Beep() function).

_{Really meta: answers/edits by me won't be done until the morning (approximately 9 hours from now).}

Answer 14

Let's talk about this...

I am planning on hosting a King of the Hill challenge in which bots will have to coordinate each other in order to be successful. The idea is to play a Diplomacy-like game between bots. The engine (still in development) will start the bots and communicate with them via stdin/stdout. There will be three phases:

0. Initialization

Well, this is not a recurring phase, it is just the engine telling each bot his id, the total number of bots participating and a seed, which can be used for generation of pseudo-random numbers (bots need to be deterministic).

1. Talking Phase (10s)

In the Talking phase, bots can send messages to each other (via engine) in order to coordinate their actions. To this end, a common language is necessary. This language should be able to express any ideas, plans and opinions a bot could have. However, not every bot is forced to be able to understand everything. Simpler bots might just ignore messages they do not understand.

Since I would like each player to be able to submit more than one bot, it is forbidden to implement a "secret handshake" by which bots recognize each other and from then on work together unconditionally.

2. Planning Phase (2s)

In this phase, bots submit what they want to do this turn. Each bot has a certain amount of supply (initially five), and can command one action per supply point. There are three possible actions:

1. Attack another bot
2. Support another bot's attack against a third bot
3. Defend another bot

There are some restrictions:

• Per opponent, you can either attack or defend them, and only once
• You cannot support an attack against a bot you also defend
• You cannot attack, defend, support yourself or a dead bot, and neither can you support attacks against yourself

3. Resolution Phase (as short as possible)

After all orders have been submitted, the engine will resolve them simultaneously in the following way:

The defending strength of each bot is the number of bots defending that bot. The attacking strength of each attack is the number of support orders for that attack. Each attack with an attacking strength greater than the defending strength of the attacked bot results in the supply counter of the attacked bot being reduced by one, and the supply counter of the attacker being increased by one.

Support orders which support a non-existent attack do nothing.

Then, all bots with supply of zero or less will be shut down by the engine: they died.

Afterwards, all remaining bots are informed about the decisions of other bots, and a new turn begins with its Talking Phase.

Further Rules

A game will consist of ten plus random number turns, so that "last turn betrayals" are not possible. The supply count of each bot will count towards their total score. I plan an ensemble of about 100 games. The bot with the highest total score wins. Tie-breaker will be the popularity (number of votes).

I am interested in your opinion: do you think that this challenge is too complex? I imagine that the code of a decent bot would be too long to fit in a post. So people would have to use github or pastebin or similar to submit their entries. The main problem imo is the interpretation of the (yet to be determined) common language.

Answer 15

Happy Holidays!

Introduction

With the holidays upon us, I decided to make an appropriately themed challenge. You are provided with a list of holidays and their respective date ranges, and given a date, you have to output a holiday greeting or the time remaining until the next holiday as appropriate.

Challenge

The list of holidays is below. You have to include it in your program (so no using a library or other external resource for this). Feel free to use any convenient format.

Start  | End    | Name
------ | ------ | -------------------
Dec 6  | Dec 7  | Saint Nicholas' Day
Dec 13 | Dec 14 | Saint Lucy's Day
Dec 24 | Dec 27 | Christmas
Jan 1  | Jan 2  | New Year
Jan 6  | Jan 7  | Epiphany
Feb 14 | Feb 15 | Valentine's Day

You are given a date as input (STDIN, function argument, or anything convenient) in YYYY-mm-dd HH:MM:SS format (e.g.: 2014-12-30 11:15:00).

You may assume that the time zone is either UTC or the system's time zone. The holiday lasts from 00:00:00 on the start date (inclusive) to 00:00:00 on the end date (exclusive).

If the date falls within the range of the holiday, you must output Happy <holiday>!, except if it's Christmas, in which case you must output Merry Christmas!.

If it doesn't, but another holiday is coming at most a week in the future, you must output:

<time> left until <holiday>.

where <time> is in the following format:

<days>d <hours>h <minutes>m <seconds>s

You can't use a library for converting the time to that format.

If there are no whole days, hours, minutes or seconds remaining, omit the number entirely. For example, 1d 0h 3m 4s should be printed as 1d 3m 4s.

If there are no upcoming holidays, you must output (no pun intended):

There are no upcoming holidays.

A trailing newline is optional, but be consistent in your program—don't add a trailing newline in one case and omit it in another.

Standard loopholes are obviously forbidden.

Test cases

Date                | Output
------------------- | ----------------------------------
2014-12-05 23:59:59 | 1s left until Saint Nicholas' Day.
2014-12-06 00:00:00 | Happy Saint Nicholas' Day!
2014-12-06 12:00:00 | Happy Saint Nicholas' Day!
2014-12-06 23:59:59 | Happy Saint Nicholas' Day!
2014-12-07 00:00:00 | 6d left until Saint Lucy's Day.
2014-12-14 00:00:00 | There are no upcoming holidays.
2014-12-24 00:00:00 | Merry Christmas!

Note that your program must work for any year, not just 2014.

Winner

This is code golf, so the submission with the fewest number of bytes wins. An answer will be accepted after a week, but I'll be happy to change the accepted answer if a new valid submission beats the previous high score.

---

code-golf date

Answer 16

Find the Minimum Width of a Set of Points

code-golfgeometrytime-complexity

Given a set of points in 2D space, you're to find the direction along which those points occupy the shortest width.

More formally, consider a set of n points P = {p₁, ..., p_n}, where p_i = (x_i,y_i), and a unit vector d = (x_d, y_d). Now K is the set of lengths obtained from orthogonal projection of P onto d. In particular, k_i = x_ix_d + y_iy_d. The width L of P along d is defined as max k_i - min k_i. Your task is to find the d along which L is minimal.

To keep things interesting, your algorithm's time complexity must not exceed O(n log n).

You may write a program or function, taking input via STDIN, command-line argument or function argument. The result may be printed to STDOUT or returned.

You can expect the input P to be in any convenient list or string format, but the input must not be pre-processed (e.g. sorted by coordinates). You may assume that the input contains at least 2 points and that no two points coincide.

The output must be correct to 10 significant (decimal) digits. Of course, d is only unique up to the relative sign of the coordinates, so there are two correct answers for each input. You may return either of those.

You must not use built-in functions related to this problem, like finding the minimum width of a polygon, or computing the convex hull of a set of points. You may use built-in vector/matrix types and operations.

Sandbox Notes

• I'll write my own solution at some point next week, and use it to provide a number of test cases.
• I'm also planning to add a handful of diagrams to clarify the definitions.
• The challenge was inspired by this proposal from Calvin's Hobbies, I think they are sufficiently different, as this problem here is only one approach to tackling his challenge (and even then it's only a subproblem). But if people think, they are too similar, and posting this one would make his a duplicate in the future, I'll retract this challenge (as I'd really like to see his posted some time).

Answer 17

The Genetic Game of Life

In this game, you play as cells (as in cellular automata). Your goal is to reproduce and kill off other cells on the board.

At the beginning of the game, two distinct configurations will be randomly chosen, one for reproduction, one for killing. The configurations will consist of 3 squares in a 5 by 5 area, not including the center square. For example,

OOXOX
OOOOO
OO OO
OOOXO
OOOOO

is an example configuration, where X represents a cell, and O can either be empty or filled. The configurations do not work if rotated.

The cells will be placed randomly, but equidistant from each other in a toroidal board. Cells will be placed in a random turn order.

Each turn, each cell will move a square one at a time. If a cell's movement creates the reproduction configuration with cells of the same type, and the center square is empty, then a new cell will spawn. If a cell's movement creates the killing configuration with cells of any type, and the center square is filled, then the cell in the center square will die.

When a new cell spawns, its DNA will be conglomeration of the DNA of the bots in the configuration. It will take its first turn after all other cells have taken 1 turn.

A cell that has not been part of a killing configuration after 200 turns will die.

The cell type with the most cells after 100K turns wins.

IO

Each turn, you will be passed a string of 1s and 0s representing your DNA, and a list of 49 integers representing a 7x7 grid of the vision around the cell. Specimens of the same type will have the same integer, and 0 will represent an empty square.

You must return a single character (N, E, S, W or X) representing the direction that the cell will travel. Attempting to move into another cell will result in your cell not moving.

Answer 18

Convert a Finite State Machine to a Regular Expression

Anyone can make a finite state machine for matching a regular expression. But what about a regular expression that emulates a finite state machine? This inverse operation is much more confusing.

Input

• A positive integer N, denoting the number of states in the machine. They are labeled 0 to N - 1.
• A list of accepting states of the machine. A string is considered to be accepted by the machine if it ends in one of these when there are no characters left.
• A list of triples (integer a, character b, integer c) representing the transition rules: when the machine is at state a and the current character in the string is b, then it may advance one character and move to state c.

You may specify the ordering and formatting of input.

Output

A regular expression that matches a string iff it is accepted by the finite state machine.

Additional Rules

• An input for the state machine may contain only printable ASCII characters which are not in the set ^$()[]|+?*\..

• The machine begins in state 0.

• You should not use any regex features other than |, (), ?, *, +

• You may not use libraries designed for this task (which apparently exist).

• The regex should match full strings (assume it is surrounded by ^ and $).

• An answer is either a program which prints the regex to stdout, or a function which returns the regex.

This is code golf: write your code in as few bytes as possible.

Sandbox Question

Should the FSM be deterministic or non?

Answer 19

ASCII Robot Wars

This idea is based off of the game "Besiege" (which I've never played) and a previous sandboxed idea of mine called "Epic Customizable Tank Battle."

The main idea is that your program is the AI that controls a robot equipped with various weapons. In this challenge, however, you will also have the opportunity to design your robot

List of Parts

(completely arbitrary and subject to total replacement)

• Wooden planks + and armored metal plates # make up the body of the robot.
• Wheels @ allow your robot to move. TODO - turning
• Most weapons are formed with two parts, a body and a pointer v^<> to denote the direction of aim.
• Cannons have a body of %, ballistas have a body of (something), spikes and battering rams are (something).
• Maybe helicopter blades can be X.
• Banners, which serve no purpose but decoration, could be $.

Example 5x5 robot

This robot has four wheels, three cannons facing forward, armored sides, and a flag in the middle.

@^^^@
#%%%#
#+$+#
#+++#
@###@

Controlling the Bot

I think this would make a really cool Stack-Snippet KOTH, since it is "visually interesting" to watch robots blow each other into pieces. Writing the controller will be hard because this is a major deviation from previous pixel-based KOTHs.

Answer 20

Sorting Source Code code-golfquine

Your task in this challenge is to write a program that takes no input and outputs This program consists of followed by your program's source code characters, but in alphabetical order.

Details

• You may only use printable ASCII characters and line breaks in your program.
• When outputting all source code characters, ignore line breaks and sort all characters by their ASCII number from lowest to highest.
• Reading your program's source code is not allowed.
• This is code-golf, so the shortest valid submission (in bytes) wins.

Here is a correctly ordered list of all printable ASCII characters (mind the space at the very beginning):

 !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~

Example

If the source code for your program is

print 'This program consists of ';
print this.sort();

then output must be

This program consists of       ''().;;Tacfghhiiiiimnnnooooppprrrrrssssssttttt

Answer 21

Strange question about transit schematics (title tbd)

graphical-output popularity-contest

In this challenge, your goal is to produce a schematic diagram of a transit network, given a list of lines and a list of stations as input. This is a popularity-contest -- the program's goal is to maximize the readability of the diagram by carefully choosing where to draw the stations and lines.

Each line in the transit network is formatted as a list of strings. For instance:

"Peel Line", "Douglas", "Port Erin", "Braddan Halt", "Union Mill", "Crosby"

The first string on the list is the name of the line. The remaining strings are the stations that that particular line stops at. In this example the Peel Line stops at Douglas, Port Erin, Braddan Halt, Union Mill, and terminates at Crosby. The lines are bidirectional so the Peel Line would also go back the other way.

Of course, most transit networks will have more than one line. Each line of the transit network will have its own line in the input. For instance:

"Peel Line", "Douglas", "Port Erin", "Braddan Halt", "Union Mill", "Crosby"
"Foxdale Line", "Ramsey", "St. John's", "Union Mill", "Bishop", "Foxdale"

Notice how both lines stop at Union Mill. This means that Union Mill is an interchange station for those two lines. A station is an interchange station if more than one line stops at it. Here is an attempt at what the network might look like:

This map does some things well but fails at other things. The lines are coloured different colours which helps differentiate the lines. In addition, the interchange station is emphasised with the white dot to show it is an interchange station. However, it fails at other things, the most prominent being that the text "Union Mill" is overlapping the line, and there is a lack of a key showing which line is which. When we fix these elements the map looks like this:

Much better! (Another way I could have resolved the Union Mill overlapping issue was to change the paths of the lines.) In addition, we can also have lines being a loop. This is indicated by the first and last train stations being the same. For instance:

"Island Line", "Port Erin", "Kitterland", "Kalfr", "Ardglass", "Kearney", "Port Erin"

The Island Line in this case is a loop that goes from Port Erin to Kitterland to Kalfr, then to Ardglass and Kearney, before finally returning to Port Erin, completing the loop.

With more complicated train networks, it becomes more difficult to arrange the stations and lines in a readable manner. Here are some inputs of varying complexity and density to try your program on. Some of them are based of actual networks, while others are made up for this challenge.

Challenge Input 1: Oslo, Norway:

"1", "Frognerseteren", "Voksenkollen", "Lillevann", "Skogen", "Voksenlia", "Holmenkollen", "Besserud", "Midtstuen", "Skådalen", "Vettakollen", "Gulleråsen", "Gråkammen", "Slemdal", "Ris", "Gaustad", "Vinderen", "Steinerud", "Frøen", "Majorstuen", "Nationaltheatret", "Stortinget", "Jernbanetorget (Oslo S)", "Grønland", "Tøyen", "Ensjø", "Helsfyr", "Brynseng", "Hellerud", "Tveita", "Haugerud", "Trosterud", "Lindeberg", "Furuset", "Ellingsrudåsen"
"2", "Østerås", "Lijordet", "Eiksmarka", "Ekravein", "Røa", "Hovseter", "Holmen", "Makrellbekken", "Smestad", "Borgen", "Majorstuen", "Nationaltheatret", "Stortinget", "Jernbanetorget (Oslo S)", "Grønland", "Tøyen", "Ensjø", "Helsfyr", "Brynseng", "Hellerud", "Tveita", "Haugerud", "Trosterud", "Lindeberg", "Furuset", "Ellingsrudåsen"
"3", "Mortensrud", "Skullerud", "Bogerud", "Bøler", "Ulsrud", "Oppsal", "Skøyenåsen", "Godlia", "Hellerud", "Brynseng", "Helsfyr", "Ensjø", "Tøyen", "Grønland", "Jernbanetorget (Oslo S)", "Stortinget", "Nationaltheatret", "Majorstuen", "Blindern", "Forskningsparken", "Ullevål stadion", "Berg", "Tåsen", "Østhorn", "Holstein", "Kringsjå", "Sognsvann"
"4", "Storo", "Nydalen", "Ullevål stadion", "Forskningsparken", "Blindern", "Majorstuen", "Nationaltheatret", "Stortinget", "Jernbanetorget (Oslo S)", "Grønland", "Tøyen", "Ensjø", "Helsfyr", "Brynseng", "Høyenhall", "Manglerud", "Ryen", "Brattlikollen", "Karlsrud", "Lambertseter", "Munkelia", "Bergkrystallen"
"5", "Storo", "Nydalen", "Ullevål stadion", "Forskningsparken", "Blindern", "Majorstuen", "Nationaltheatret", "Stortinget", "Jernbanetorget (Oslo S)", "Grønland", "Tøyen", "Carl Berners plass", "Hasle", "Økern", "Risløkka", "Vollebekk", "Linderud", "Veitvet", "Rødtvet", "Kalbakken", "Ammerud", "Grorud", "Romsås", "Rommen", "Stovner", "Vestli"
"6", "Bekkestua", "Ringstabekk", "Jar", "Bjørnsletta", "Åsjordet", "Ullernåsen", "Montebello", "Smestad", "Borgen", "Majorstuen", "Nationaltheatret", "Stortinget", "Jernbanetorget (Oslo S)", "Grønland", "Tøyen", "Carl Berners plass", "Sinsen", "Storo"

Here's what the official map looks like for some inspiration (click to enlarge):

TODO: more challenge inputs coming!

Sandbox Notes

• I've had this one sitting around for a while. I've wanted to try and make a popularity-contest graphical-output that wasn't just about making the prettiest image. So instead it's about making the most functional image, which I'm not sure is any better than the art challenges...
• Another thing I've been considering is changing it to a code-golf. I'd have minimum requirements for the final output (a key, coloured lines, distinguished interchange stations, etc.) and the shortest code that implemented all the requirements would win. I'd like your thoughts on whether this challenge would work better as code golf or popularity contest.

Answer 22

Permutations of the Fifteen Puzzle

POSTED

Answer 23

How to Gossip Appropriately

We all know how important it is to get social arrangements right:

You have a group of friends who love to gossip. However, gossip is notorious for changing as it gets spread from friend to friend, and if somebody hears two versions of the same gossip, it just ruins it for them.

Hence, you and all of your friends have agreed to gossip in an orderly manner, and it is your job to define who will gossip with who and for how long. Ideal gossiping must follow the following rules:

1. Each friend must gossip for a specific amount of time. This time is different for each person.

2. Any pair of friends will only spend so long gossiping. Any longer, and it will become dull. We will refer to this time as L. This time is the same for all friends.

3. Gossipping only comes in minute increments. We have no idea why this is, but its true.

4. Gossip must eventually reach everybody. If any given friend has new gossip, then all of your friends must eventually get that gossip.

5. Proper gossipping never includes circles. If A gossips to B and C, and then B gossips to C, then C will hear the news from two different people, and therefore, two different stories.

As an example say you are given the following as input:

Let's start by looking at B. She prefers to gossip for only 1 minute, so she will only be able to gossip with one friend.

We know that she can't gossip with D, as that breaks rule #4

If we have B gossip with C, then C will have 1 minute of gossipping left, and A won't be able to fill his 2 minutes of gossipping needs.

Therefore, we know that B must gossip with A for 1 minute, and A must gossip for 1 minute with C. C and D each have 1 minute of gossipping remaining, so they must both gossip with E.

E needs 2 more minutes of gossip.

If E gossips with F for 2 minutes, then gossip can't ever reach G.

If E gossips with F for 1 minute and G for 1 minute, then F must gossip with H for 1 minute, and H will then gossip with G for 2 minutes. This will create a circle, breaking rule #5.

Therefore, we know that E gossips with G for 2 minutes, G gossips with H for 1 minute, and H gossips with F for 2 minutes.

Our final gossipping tree looks like:

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Input will be in the following format, and will be passed to your program via STDIN (or closest alternative):

Max_Gossip_Time [Node0_Ideal_Gossip_Time, Node1_Ideal_Gossip_Time, ...] [[Node0, Node1], [Node0, Node1], ...]

The second array passed is the friend list, and are integers that refer to the positions in Ideal_Gossip_Time array.

The example above would be input as follows:

2 [2, 1, 2, 1, 4, 2, 3, 3] [[0, 1], [0, 2], [1, 2], [1, 3], [2, 3], [2, 4], [3, 4], [4, 5], [4, 6], [5, 7], [6, 7]]

Output should be to STDIO (or closest alternative) in the following format:

[[Node0, Node1, Gossip_Time], [Node0, Node2, Gossip_Time], ...]

On the above example, the output should be similar to:

[[0, 1, 1], [0, 2, 1], [2, 4, 1], [3, 4, 1], [4, 6, 2], [5, 7, 2], [6, 7, 1]]

On both input and output, the friend list can be in any order.

Answer 24

If it floats, it boats!

code-golf

The goal of this challenge is to determine whether or not an ASCII-art shape will float. Like any other boat, ASCII boats obey the law of buoyancy: it will float if it displaces an equal mass of water.

ASCII boats are made out of O characters arranged in some contiguous shape (diagonals are connected). There may be trailing spaces, but the whole input is a rectangle (trailing newline optional). Example boat:

   O         O    
    O        O    
     OOOOOOOOO    

The material of the boat has twice the density of water. When a boat is floating, the number of displaced water characters is at least twice number of O character in the boat. Here is an artist's impression of a boat while floating.

   O         O    
~~~~O        O~~~~
~~~~~OOOOOOOOO~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This boat has 13 O characters, but displaces 19 water characters, so it floats.

The key to floating is the creation of an air pocket. Air pockets can be formed in two ways: either the water cannot reach the pocket (because the boat has walls keeping it out), or air is trapped in the pocket and cannot escape. Here's an example of a capsized boat which can still float (warning: do not attempt at home).

     OOOOOOOOO
~~~~O        O~~~~
~~~O         O~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The following shapes aren't boats because they can't float:

OOO
O  
O  
O  
OOO

   O         O    
    O        O    
     OOOOOOOOO    
             O    
         OOOOOOOOO
         OOOOOOOOO
         OOOOOOOOO

The Goal

Write a program that, when given an ASCII-art shape, outputs a truthy value if it boats, and a falsey value if it doesn't boat. This is code golf, fewest bytes wins.

Answer 25

Multiples - a wrap battle

king-of-the-hill

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Overview

Change cells in multiples to wipe out your opponent, while avoiding being wiped out yourself.

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This is a 2 player game, played on a linear string of cells of length L that wrap in a loop. Counting along the loop eventually brings you back to where you started (after L steps). L will be fixed across all battles, and will be a reasonably large prime.

Each cell is controlled by player 1, player 2, or is neutral. These will be indicated as 1, 2 and 0 respectively.

Starting position

Player 2 starts with a cell at position 0 (since all are equivalent).

Player 1 starts with a randomly chosen cell from 1 to floor(L/2).

Player 1 moves first, reflecting the fact that player 1 has further to go to catch player 2.

Taking a turn

Each player begins with a stockpile of 0, and at the start of each turn the player's stockpile is increased by the number of cells that they currently control. The player then takes their turn. They choose any cell they control and specify a number N, which can be any non-negative integer up to and including the size of the stockpile. The stockpile is reduced by this number, and N loop cells are affected as follows:

Starting with the chosen cell as cell 0, each of the cells N, 2N, 3N, ... N*N are changed.

• Choosing 0 means nothing happens, at zero cost.
• Choosing 1 means the cell immediately after the chosen cell is changed, at a cost of 1.
• Choosing 2 means the cell 2 cells on and the cell 4 cells on are changed, at a cost of 2.
• Choosing 3 means the cells 3, 6 and 9 cells on are changed, at a cost of 3.
• In general, choosing N changes N cells at a cost of N.

When a cell is changed it follows the following rules:

• A neutral cell becomes the player's.
• An enemy cell becomes neutral.
• A cell already owned by the player becomes the enemy's

Large N

I expect most moves will choose N considerably smaller, but saving up would allow choosing N considerably larger than L in theory.

Choosing N=L means that all of the changed cells will be the same - the chosen cell, and it will be changed L times.

Choosing N=L-1 means that the L-1 consecutive cells before the chosen cell will all be changed (that is, every cell except the chosen one will be changed).

Winning

If a move leaves no enemy cells remaining, that player wins.

After 1000 moves any player who has more cells than their enemy at the start of 2 consecutive turns in a row (one theirs, one their enemy's, in either order) wins.

After 2000 moves the game is a draw (tie).

---

Input and output

Input

At the start of a game the player's code will be called with a command line argument of 1 or 2 indicating which player they are (player 1 moves first and is represented by 1s in the loop string).

Each turn the player will be supplied with:

• A string of 0s, 1s and 2s representing the loop.
• An integer S representing the size of their stockpile.
• An integer R representing the size of their opponent's stockpile.
• An integer representing the number of turns taken so far (this will always be an even number for player 1).

Output

The player should output 2 integers:

• The cell C to play from, in the range 0 <= C < L.
• The number of cells to change N, in the range 0 <= N <= S (their current stockpile size).

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Sandbox questions

• I like the idea of this being a 1 dimensional game, but I can also see it working on a 2d grid, where each move is applied both horizontally and vertically (either on a square L by L, or with 2 distinct large primes as side lengths). Does anyone have anything for or against either 1d or 2d?

• Any recommendations on what input to provide? I was thinking at least the values of all the cells, but would a history also be good, or better to make the players decide what history to track for themselves rather than providing it? Alternatively they could be memoryless and decide purely based on the current cell formation.

• Is the random starting position a good idea? Would it be better to fix the starting position at floor(L/2), ensuring this number is prime, and let the players taking turns to be player 1 balance out any bias?

Answer 26

Help Indiana Jones and his crew cross the bridge!

This codegolf will solve the Bridge and Torch problem. In this problem, there are multiple people (I'm thinking four) who must all cross a weak bridge to escape an evil dragon as quickly as possible. Because the bridge is weak, only two people can cross the bridge at a time. The whole crew is armed with one torch, which is necessary for 1 or 2 people to cross the bridge. Furthermore, each person takes a certain, integral amount of time to cross the bridge. When two people cross together, they must run at the rate of the slower person. The whole crew needs to quickly figure out how to get all the people across the bridge in the least amount of time to maximize their chances of survival.

Input A list of names of the crew (one word, a-zA-Z) and how long they take to cross the bridge alone.

Output An explanation of who crosses the bridge in which order so that the total time is minimized, and the total time.

Example Input: Indiana 5 Jones 10

Output:

Indiana, Jones 10

Input: A 1 B 2 C 5 D 8

Output:

A, B A C, D B A, B 15

I'm thinking of either just solving this problem with any number of people, or another version in which anyone not at the end (ie. on the first side or on the bridge) after the time limit dies, and the goal is to minimize the number of deaths.

Answer 27

Bad Lip Reading Generator

A malapropism is the substitution of one word for another that sounds similar, often as a way to make something sound unintentionally humorous. For example, "He's a wolf in cheap clothing" is a malapropism, since the expected word, "sheep's", got replaced by "cheap", which sounds similar but means something different.

A modern version of malapropism is to take scenes from movies and redub the dialog with different words that match the actors mouth movements as a parody. There is a YouTube channel called "Bad Lip Reading" that uses this technique.

I would like to apply the process to some old videos with subtitle files, then watch the videos with the sound turned down to turn it into a long series of malapropisms.

Using mouth movements gives a more flexible range of malapropism so there is some flexibility between different sounds.

Challenge

Create a malapropism generator. I want to be able to feed text from subtitles into the generator and have text which is different, but still matches the mouth movements of the actors.

Input

A string of English words, (already processed to remove punctuation and forced to uppercase).

Output

A string of English words, (same format as input).

Notes

To simplify the challenge, all input words are in upper case, separated by whitespace, with all punctuation except apostrophes removed.

Lets agree to constraint what words "sound like", to be based on the CMUDICT. You may scrub the data so you don't have to worry about comments or special punctuation entries and remove stress numbers.

Lets also agree on the mouth-movements associated with the sounds, called "visemes". Here is a mapping used by Microsoft's SAPI library, which is itself based on Disney animation rules. Microsoft uses the same set of phonemes from ARPABet as CMUDict data.

#   ARPAbet Phoneme

1   AE AH
2   AA
3   AO
4   EH EY UH
5   ER
6   IH IY Y
7   UW W
8   OW
9   AW
10  OY
11  AY
12  HH
13  R
14  L
15  S  Z
16  CH JH SH ZH
17  DH TH
18  F  V
19  D  N  T
20  G  K  NG
21  B  M  P

You should be able to take each English word, convert to a set of phonemes, then to a set of visemes, then produce a list of words with matching visemes and randomly select one of the other words from the list. If a word doesn't match, or doesn't have any alternative, the original word should be copied to output.

Examples

• "HELLO WORLD" "HALLOW WHIRLED"
• "I SEE DEAD PEOPLE" "EYE SEA TED PEOPLE"
• "I WILL BE BACK" "EYE WHEEL PEA BAG"
• "IT WAS BEAUTY KILLED THE BEAST" "INN WAS PUNY GILT THE MIST"
• "MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU" "MAY THE FOURS BEE WITH YEW"

Test Cases

Since the words are random, I have selected some pairs of words with unique pronunciation. Your function or program should always return one word when presented with the other:

Input            Output
"AMUSING"        "ABUSING"
"APOGEE"         "APACHE"
"BACKDATING"     "MAGNETIC"
"BALLOONING"     "POLLUTING"
"INVISIBLE"      "INFEASIBLE"
"LAMPS"          "LUMPS"
"SCORN"          "SCORED"
"WEPT"           "WEBBED"

Rules

• You can write a full program or function.
• Input should be taken from stdin or function parameters. Output should be printed through stdout or returned.

Scoring

This is [code-golf]. Submission with least number of bytes, (not including data file(s)) wins.

Answer 28

Cake

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Concerns:

• I'm not sure how well single language questions do. It automatically limits the question to those that already know the language, and those that are willing to learn just for this question. There's no need to limit to Chef with some of the magic this community can produce!

• "selfish/demanding" sounds quite strong and could sound like a bit of a personal attack on Beta Decay. It certainly isn't intended like that, and I expect it will be accepted as intended, but is it better to err on the side of caution?

Answer 29

Source code ecological footprint

You've just been hired by a German car manufacturing company. Your first task, as an engineer, is to write a program that computes the ecological footprint of source code.

The ecological footprint of a character is computed as follows (you can assume the source code is ASCII-encoded):

Write the character's ASCII code in binary, and count the number of 1's.

For example, A has a footprint of 2, but O is dirtier with a footprint of 5.

The global footprint of a program is the sum of the footprints of its characters.

Your program must accept a string as parameter, compute its ecological footprint, and output it.

There is a subtlety though. As you wish to enter a new, more restrictive market, you need to tune your program so that it behaves differently in "test mode". Thus:

The program should output 0 when it receives the string test as parameter.

Scoring

The source code with the smaller ecological footprint wins (and yes, the answer test is forbidden!)

Answer 30

Group Students Into Pairs

code-golf graphs

Synopsis: A graph theory matching problem. Given a list of which students like and dislike each other, pair the students up to maximise the overal happiness of the classroom.

Introduction

If you've ever been a teacher before, you've likely encountered the extremely frustrating experience that is getting students to do pair work. More often than not no one is happy with their partner, and the mood of the classroom suffers.

In this challenge, we're going to solve the enduring problem of pair work in classrooms. Here's how our system will work:

1. Each student shall write down what students they are happy to work with, and which ones they are not happy to work with.
2. We will take those lists, and generate student pairs such that the total happiness of the classroom is at its maximum.
3. The students are now (mostly) happy!

So how is the happiness of the classroom calculated? For each student in each pair of students:

• If a student's partner is in their "happy to work with" list, increase the happiness of the classroom by 1.
• If a student's partner is in their "not happy to work with" list, decrease the happiness of the classroom by 1.
• If a student is neutral towards their partner (not in either list), the happiness of the classroom does not change.

Here's a useful table that summarises the possible changes in the happiness with each pair of students:

+-------------------+-------------------+--------------------+
| Student 1 Feeling | Student 2 Feeling | Happiness Modifier |
+-------------------+-------------------+--------------------+
| Happy!            | Happy!            | +2                 |
| Happy!            | Neutral           | +1                 |
| Happy!            | Not happy...      | 0                  |
| Neutral           | Happy!            | +1                 |
| Neutral           | Neutral           | 0                  |
| Neutral           | Not happy...      | -1                 |
| Not happy...      | Happy!            | 0                  |
| Not happy...      | Neutral           | -1                 |
| Not happy...      | Not happy...      | -2                 |
+-------------------+-------------------+--------------------+

Input

First line of input is a positive integer n indicating the number of students to match up. n is always even. Following that are n lines, each line which has the format:

name likes dislikes

where name is the name of the student (which will only contain characters from [A-Za-z]), likes is a comma separated list of people he or she would be happy to work with, and dislikes is a comma separated list of people he or she would not be happy to work with. For instance:

Clarence Tiger,Anna,Jamal Amelia,James

This would indicate that Clarence is happy to work with Tiger, Anna, or Jamal; he is not happy to work with Amelia or James; and towards any other student he is neutral.

Another line:

Ilya Amelia,Clarence,Anna,Tiger,Jamal _

This would indicate that Ilya is happy to work with Amelia, Clarence, Anna, Tiger, and Jamal. For dislikes, we've used the special keyword _, which indicates that Ilya doesn't have anyone he is not happy to work with. Any remaining students Ilya would be neutral towards.

Output

Output space separated comma separated pairs of names, where each name corresponds to a pair of students. The pairs should be such that the happiness of the classroom is maximised. Every student should be in exactly one pair.

Example Inputs and Outputs

Writing reference implementation. This is one of those types of questions where you can't really judge the correct output for an input "by eye".

Sandbox Questions

1. This problem is quite difficult compared to typical code-golf fare, requiring two different algorithms to solve the weighted maximum matching problem. Is it too difficult for a code-golf? And if it is, what could make a better winning criterion?