From: Morton Goldberg <m_goldberg@...>
Date: 2006-08-16T08:04:43+09:00
Subject: Re: [QUIZ] Newbie doubts about the quiz

On Aug 15, 2006, at 5:51 PM, James Edward Gray II wrote:

> On Aug 15, 2006, at 4:34 PM, Morton Goldberg wrote:
>
>> Well, you might look at the solution I posted earlier today for  
>> hints. It's not all that good, but I happened to take an approach  
>> very similar to what you outline here. It works, but just barely.  
>> My experience with it is that a simple depth-first search is too  
>> slow for grids bigger than 6 x 6 (which is pathetic considering  
>> some of huge grids solved by posted solutions).
>
> I'm uncomfortable with the word "pathetic" here.

Pathetic is as pathetic behaves. :) And perhaps I should have put the  
smiley after my original use of "pathetic". Because I meant it in a  
self-deprecating, jokey way, it never occurred to me that I would  
upset anyone.

I'm not ashamed of my solution. If I were, I wouldn't have posted it.  
But performance is not one of virtues, and there is no sense in  
pretending otherwise. It does, I believe, have the merit of  
simplicity, and I'm vain enough to think it's kind of pretty, code- 
wise, which I why I commended it to the OP.

> Remember that we have all level of people who like to play with the  
> quizzes.  If someone only manages to get a slow solution together,  
> that's still a solution!  Even better, they gained enough  
> understanding of the problem, that they can then look to the  
> summary and other solutions for tricks they might try next time.
>
> If you have fun, challenge yourself a little, and even learn  
> something, the quiz is a big win I say.

Oh, I had fun. And the fun's not over. I expect to learn a lot when I  
read the other solutions. There a good chance I'll steal a few ideas  
and rewrite my code so it can handle big grids. It was an interesting  
problem. From the amount of discussion and the number of solutions  
posted, I would say that of lot people thought so.

> I wouldn't think, "Wow, my solution sucks."  Instead, I would  
> think, "OK, that's tougher than it looks.  Let me go see how these  
> guys made it go so fast..."  ;)

I have no difficulty thinking both those things at the same time. And  
two impossible thing before breakfast :)

Regards, Morton