May 2017

[science_man_88]

Originally Posted by a1call

Writing a program that finds thousands of solutions in minutes is definitely not "not doing this properly".

The only reason I moved to manually finding a solution is because there was not a chance my brute force program would find a solution in my lifetime.

maybe you're allowing too many exceptions to the rules into it ? are any possible parity arguments, maximum distance from the start arguments, etc. weighed into it ? yes I probably gave too much away feel free to delete if you need to.

[EdH]

Originally Posted by a1call

Writing a program that finds thousands of solutions in minutes is definitely not "not doing this properly".

The only reason I moved to manually finding a solution is because there was not a chance my brute force program would find a solution in my lifetime.

Thanks.

My reservations are based in the idea that rather than creating a formula that produces the desired result, I am, in effect, doing trial and error/success testing. I guess I'll see if my name shows up in the list...

[LaurV]

I am with EDH here. I assume there are lots of solutions. I found a solution in less than 10 minutes using excel and a 20 lines macro.
(edit: the starting point had already the condition fulfilled for 12 letters, done by hand - actually quite easy, but I got bored and wrote the macro...)

[henryzz]

Just sent in my solution. Found more by luck than anything else.

Is it possible to prove that for n > 4, 2n+1 characters are needed or is there a possibility of a 52 solution for a star?

[R. Gerbicz]

Originally Posted by henryzz

Is it possible to prove that for n > 4, 2n+1 characters are needed or is there a possibility of a 52 solution for a star?

Mission impossible. There is a solution for n=7 with (2*n) length, and for many larger n values.

[henryzz]

Originally Posted by R. Gerbicz

Mission impossible. There is a solution for n=7 with (2*n) length, and for many larger n values.

Based upon no stars so far I thought that it would be impossible. Interesting to know that there are many n values with 2*n.
Do any require 2*n+2? Is there an upper bound?

[R. Gerbicz]

Originally Posted by henryzz

Based upon no stars so far I thought that it would be impossible.

(So far) there is no posted star part of the problem.

Originally Posted by henryzz

Do any require 2*n+2? Is there an upper bound?

Interesting question. Worked out a really easy upper bound.

[uau]

Originally Posted by henryzz

Do any require 2*n+2? Is there an upper bound?

2*n+1 is an upper bound.
I guess it's better to not post the exact minimum of the puzzle case before the month is over as the value or reasoning for it could make finding solutions easier.

[science_man_88]

Originally Posted by uau

2*n+1 is an upper bound.
I guess it's better to not post the exact minimum of the puzzle case before the month is over as the value or reasoning for it could make finding solutions easier.

depends on how many hyphen you are allowed in theory you can make this puzzle go up to 403+ in length if you don't care about how many hyphen there are.

[a1call]

Originally Posted by science_man_88

depends on how many hyphen you are allowed in theory you can make this puzzle go up to 403+ in length if you don't care about how many hyphen there are.

Here the Upper-Bound implies the minimum number of hyphens that would produce a valid result (without saying).

[science_man_88]

Originally Posted by a1call

Here the Upper-Bound implies the minimum number of hyphens that would produce a valid result (without saying).

aka a least upper bound technically an upper bound is any value greater than or equal to the number/last element of the set you want to study.