From: Dennis Ranke <dennis.ranke@...>
Date: 2004-11-14T07:48:23+09:00
Subject: Re: [QUIZ] Countdown (#7)

Steven Jenkins wrote:
> I need a faster computer or a faster brain. I've got a brute force 
> algorithm that appears to work, but it won't complete in anything like 
> three minutes.

I expect this quiz to yield a great amount of different solutions and 
I'm already looking forward to seeing the first of them tomorrow. :)
Choosing different approaches will result in wildly differing runtimes, 
as I have found out myself.
My first try took about one hour (intelligent guess, i never let it run 
that long) in the worst case (ie. when there was no exact solution). My 
new implementation takes... well... a bit less... ;)