From: Ken Bloom <kbloom@...>
Date: 2008-01-07T11:10:02+09:00
Subject: Re: zed shaw zed shaw zed shaw

On Fri, 04 Jan 2008 17:58:15 -0500, Giles Bowkett wrote:

>> > Tangent: city ITA Software has a really cool interview question: come
>> > up with maximum number of combinations of movie titles, e.g., "The
>> > Unbearable Lightness Of Being John Malkovich."
>>
>> Hat trick: Gone with the Winds of War and Peace.
> 
> No, the whole point is to do it in Ruby.
> 
>> Can this get any more off topic?
> 
> OK, do it in Ruby, and then tell everybody you're going to kick their
> ass.

K=100 #set this to the number of movies you want in the invented title

require 'open-uri'

MOVIES=open('http://itafullsite.dev.neptuneweb.com/careers/puzzles/
MOVIES.LST'){|f| f.readlines}
MOVIES.collect!{|x| x.split}

class Array
  def shuffle!
    size.downto 1 do |n|
      push(delete_at(rand(n)))
    end
    self
  end
end

cstack=[MOVIES.dup.shuffle!]
pstack=[cstack[-1].shift]

while pstack.size<K
  cstack << MOVIES.select{|x| x[0]==pstack[-1][-1]}.shuffle!
  while cstack[-1].empty?
    cstack.pop
    pstack.pop
  end
  pstack << (pstack[-1][0...-1] rescue [])+cstack[-1].shift
end

puts pstack[-1].join(" ")

HANGMANS CURSE OF THE PUPPET MASTER NINJA I LIKE IT LIKE THAT DARN CAT 
PEOPLE WILL TALK RADIO DAYS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY COME EASY 
GO NOW YOU SEE HIM NOW YOU DONT TELL MOM THE BABYSITTERS DEAD HEAT AND 
DUST TO GLORY ROAD HOUSE OF DRACULA PAGES FROM A VIRGINS DIARY OF A MAD 
BLACK WOMAN ON TOP GUN CRAZY PEOPLE WILL TALK RADIO DAYS OF HEAVEN CAN 
WAIT UNTIL DARK BLUE CAR 54 WHERE ARE YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE AROUND THE WORLD 
IN 80 DAYS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY COME EASY GO NOW YOU SEE 
HIM NOW YOU DONT GO IN THE HOUSE OF DRACULA DEAD AND LOVING IT COULD 
HAPPEN TO YOU CAN COUNT ON ME WITHOUT YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE AS A HOUSE 
PARTY 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY GIRL IN THE CADILLAC MAN TROUBLE EVERY DAY FOR 
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD MAN OF THE HOUSE PARTY GIRL IN THE CADILLAC MAN 
TROUBLE IN PARADISE ROAD HOUSE PARTY GIRL IN THE CADILLAC MAN OF THE 
HOUSE PARTY 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY GIRL IN THE CADILLAC MAN TROUBLE IN 
PARADISE ROAD HOUSE PARTY 3 NINJAS KICK BACK TO THE BEACH PARTY MONSTER 
IN A BOX OF MOON LIGHT OF DAY FOR NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY 
TRAIN RIDE TO HOLLYWOOD

-- 
Ken (Chanoch) Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/