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eytanz
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icon Son of Deflectomundo (+1)  
Hi everyone,

Ok, so the official contest is over. It's time for a small ancilliary contest - finding the most optimal solution for each of the puzzles.

I originally doubted they could vary much, but then I made a typo in my submission. TripleM, who I sent my solution, suggested a correction that involved adding 4 deflectors. But my original (correct) solution had the same amount of deflectors as my submission did. So there's definitely room for variation.

So, lets do this as follows. Everyone has until Local Time:02-22-2006 at 02:00 PM (that's negative 947 weeks, 6 days from now) left to send me a PM which specifies their solution, and what puzzle it is for. I will then award 10 rank points to the most optimal solution(s) for each puzzle. Simple.

One request - send me solutions in the format required by TripleM's checking program - i.e., A1/ B2\\ - letter, number and direction without breaks, seperated by spaces.

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[Last edited by eytanz at 02-21-2006 01:14 PM]
02-21-2006 at 01:14 PM
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agaricus5
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eytanz wrote:
So, lets do this as follows. Everyone has until Local Time:02-22-2006 at 02:00 PM (that's negative 947 weeks, 6 days from now) left to send me a PM which specifies their solution, and what puzzle it is for. I will then award 10 rank points to the most optimal solution(s) for each puzzle. Simple.
Can I enter all four puzzles, or only one?

Also, since we're going for optimalness, and time's not such an issue, may I use my Generic Raytracer? If so, I'll update it to allow its usage on a 24*22 grid.

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[Last edited by agaricus5 at 02-21-2006 05:47 PM]
02-21-2006 at 05:46 PM
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Chaco
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Well, he said to PM our solutions to the puzzles - which I think means the solutions we used to the puzzles we solved. In other words, I PMed him my contest entry.

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02-21-2006 at 05:58 PM
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eytanz
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Hmm...

Lets do it this way - to participate, you must send me the same answer you sent the contest (I can't see them, so I'll be using the honor system). If you do so, you can *also* send me improved solutions, and solutions to the other puzzles. I'll announce seperate "best of contest" and "best overall" winners.

I'd rather people don't use the raytracer, to keep it on equal ground (since it's not very user-friendly, I'm not sure everyone can use it equally).

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02-21-2006 at 06:17 PM
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agaricus5
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eytanz wrote:
Hmm...

Lets do it this way - to participate, you must send me the same answer you sent the contest (I can't see them, so I'll be using the honor system). If you do so, you can *also* send me improved solutions, and solutions to the other puzzles. I'll announce seperate "best of contest" and "best overall" winners.
What if you got your solution incorrect due to a typo or an error?

I'd rather people don't use the raytracer, to keep it on equal ground (since it's not very user-friendly, I'm not sure everyone can use it equally).
Hmm... I didn't think it was extremely complicated to use (although that may be because I made it). I'll have another go and change the raytracer algorithms to require less input from the user. I'll also repost the usage instructions here and in the original thread:

1. Give each type of monster and object on the Deflectomundo grid a unique number. For example, you might call a red door "1", a blue door "2", a serpent head "3", and so on up to number 46 (there are 46 pairs of objects altogether).
2. Type these numbers into the blue boxes with black borders on the Spreadsheet in the same places that they are in on the picture. For example, if a wubba you called "17" was on the top of the grid, in column 6, put "17" in the blue filled square at the top of the spreadsheet grid that is in Column 17.
3. The spreadsheet will automatically create rays (on the next sheet) from each of your numbers. The places where a ray from a square hits the edge of the grid will be shown in the yellow squares with red borders. So, if a ray from a number "25" hits the edge on the right side of the board in row F, then "25" will appear in the yellow box in row F on the right side of the grid.
4. Add deflectors by typing "\\" or "/" into the boxes on the grid. Your goal is to make the destination squares of the rays (yellow) match up with the required squares (blue). If the number is the same in both, you've connected a pair correctly using your deflectors, and a tick (square root sign :)) will appear in the white squares with green borders. If a ray hits the wrong number, then a cross will appear instead.
5. You have finished when there are no crosses left on the board.

If you have a smaller board than the grid, (not applicable in the Deflectomundo Puzzles, though), then simply fill in the blue squares with what you have, lining up the columns and rows correctly, and fill the rest of them with "0".

Is this more user-friendly?

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02-21-2006 at 07:04 PM
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eytanz
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agaricus5 wrote:
eytanz wrote:
Lets do it this way - to participate, you must send me the same answer you sent the contest (I can't see them, so I'll be using the honor system). If you do so, you can *also* send me improved solutions, and solutions to the other puzzles. I'll announce seperate "best of contest" and "best overall" winners.
What if you got your solution incorrect due to a typo or an error?

You can send a corrected version as long as it involves the same number of deflectors. If that's impossible, explain the situation to me and I'll decide then; I don't think that's a likely contingency.

I'd rather people don't use the raytracer, to keep it on equal ground (since it's not very user-friendly, I'm not sure everyone can use it equally).
Hmm... I didn't think it was extremely complicated to use (although that may be because I made it). I'll have another go and change the raytracer algorithms to require less input from the user. I'll also repost the usage instructions here and in the original thread:

1. Give each type of monster and object on the Deflectomundo grid a unique number. For example, you might call a red door "1", a blue door "2", a serpent head "3", and so on up to number 46 (there are 46 pairs of objects altogether).
2. Type these numbers into the blue boxes with black borders on the Spreadsheet in the same places that they are in on the picture. For example, if a wubba you called "17" was on the top of the grid, in column 6, put "17" in the blue filled square at the top of the spreadsheet grid that is in Column 17.
3. The spreadsheet will automatically create rays (on the next sheet) from each of your numbers. The places where a ray from a square hits the edge of the grid will be shown in the yellow squares with red borders. So, if a ray from a number "25" hits the edge on the right side of the board in row F, then "25" will appear in the yellow box in row F on the right side of the grid.
4. Add deflectors by typing "\\" or "/" into the boxes on the grid. Your goal is to make the destination squares of the rays (yellow) match up with the required squares (blue). If the number is the same in both, you've connected a pair correctly using your deflectors, and a tick (square root sign :)) will appear in the white squares with green borders. If a ray hits the wrong number, then a cross will appear instead.
5. You have finished when there are no crosses left on the board.

If you have a smaller board than the grid, (not applicable in the Deflectomundo Puzzles, though), then simply fill in the blue squares with what you have, lining up the columns and rows correctly, and fill the rest of them with "0".

Is this more user-friendly?

Yeah, a bit. I think these puzzles are more fun without this sort of tool, but since it won't actually help optimize I'll allow it.

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[Last edited by eytanz at 02-21-2006 09:06 PM : Fixed quote tags]
02-21-2006 at 08:19 PM
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TripleM
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icon Re: Son of Deflectomundo (+2)  
agaricus5 wrote:
1. Give each type of monster and object on the Deflectomundo grid a unique number. For example, you might call a red door "1", a blue door "2", a serpent head "3", and so on up to number 46 (there are 46 pairs of objects altogether).
2. Type these numbers into the blue boxes with black borders on the Spreadsheet in the same places that they are in on the picture. For example, if a wubba you called "17" was on the top of the grid, in column 6, put "17" in the blue filled square at the top of the spreadsheet grid that is in Column 17.

I had to do this as well when writing the program, so here they are for each puzzle, starting from the leftmost picture on the top row, going clockwise.
Puzzles 1-4 in order:
{1,2,3,4,5,1,6,7,8,9,9,10,11,12,10,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,15,20,14,21,19,8,21,22,7,18,23,24,22,23,25,25,26,24,27,26,28,29,30,28,31,32,29,33,32,33,34,16,35,30,36,37,4,37,35,5,34,38,39,40,27,41,42,13,39,42,43,44,40,45,31,38,41,12,46,17,45,6,36,43,2,44,11,3,46}
{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,2,9,8,10,11,12,9,13,14,15,16,17,18,15,19,39,20,17,14,21,10,22,19,23,24,25,26,27,25,28,27,26,29,30,31,22,32,37,30,33,32,16,34,33,34,35,36,37,29,31,38,35,40,39,41,41,42,43,44,21,44,45,38,43,20,45,42,36,46,23,24,40,4,46,7,18,11,12,13,28,6,1,3,5}
{1,2,3,1,4,5,6,12,7,8,9,9,10,11,6,13,14,15,16,16,11,15,17,10,18,19,20,17,21,22,20,23,24,25,22,26,27,28,29,7,30,31,32,33,28,34,32,35,30,35,8,33,36,31,29,27,37,37,36,39,38,39,21,14,40,26,41,42,38,43,42,44,40,34,45,41,44,19,5,43,18,13,25,23,4,45,3,46,24,12,2,46}
{1,2,3,4,5,6,6,7,8,9,4,1,5,10,11,7,12,13,12,14,15,16,15,17,14,13,16,18,11,17,19,10,20,21,9,21,18,22,22,23,24,25,26,20,27,28,27,26,29,30,31,31,32,33,34,33,35,36,29,23,19,37,25,28,38,39,37,40,41,42,46,36,42,39,43,40,38,32,35,44,45,34,41,44,43,45,8,24,3,46,30,2}
(If anyone finds a mistake in there, let me know, since then my program will be wrong).
02-21-2006 at 08:34 PM
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eytanz
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Okay, very few people actually responded to this. I guess there's just not much interest. So, just in case someone is interested but forgot to send in a response, I'm going to allow late submissions until I have time to actually look at the submissions today (in a few hours).

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02-22-2006 at 02:03 PM
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Chaco
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Solving one puzzle was enough. I don't really feel like doing it again, even without the pressing time limit.

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02-22-2006 at 02:06 PM
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eytanz
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Well, yeah, but I figured more people would just send in the answers they used for the other contest.

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02-22-2006 at 02:43 PM
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Doom
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I was just thinking that I could bother with copy/pasting my answer from the contest topic and send it to Eytan, but then I noticed that it's too late already. Well, I wasn't particularly efficient with my 70 deflectors anyway.

The optimal amount will be a lot smaller. I was able to connect all but 2 pairs with 44 deflectors in the same puzzle later. Tried a couple of more times, but there was always something in the end that didn't match. Trying to be as efficient as possible makes the puzzles definitely more challenging. I thought that they were generally very easy if you didn't care about efficiency. (As long as you followed a certain strategy instead of just placing the deflectors around randomly)
02-22-2006 at 05:56 PM
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Chaco
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Yeah - there are a lot of matches that can be made with one or two deflectors. Re-using them, well, that's harder.

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02-22-2006 at 06:03 PM
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eytanz
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Okay - well, this didn't end up being a very succesful contest. I didn't get many responses, plus I was too busy to actually check the answers.

I'm sure it's possible to optimize beyond these, but the best responses for each of the puzzles were:

Original solutions:

Puzzle 1: Maurog, 62 deflectors
Puzzle 2: NiroZ, ~60 deflectors (he had typos in it that made it unclear)
Puzzle 4: Doom, 70 deflectors

No-one submitted a puzzle 3 solution.

Corrected solutions:
Puzzle 4: Doom, 51 moves

So, Maurog, NiroZ, and Doom - if you post replies to this topic, I'll give you your mod points :).

By the way, neither of the puzzle 4 solutions by Doom beat my own 50-deflector original solution, but I'm not participating in my own contest...

If people are interested, I can post the solutions, but I'm not going to take up space if there are no requests since it seems not too many people care.

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02-23-2006 at 08:18 PM
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Doom
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Oh yeah, almost forgot this topic. It looks a bit like I was the only one to submit a second solution (Just making predictions according to the other three). I thought it was fun to play with the puzzles a little more after the main contest.

My solutions weren't indeed close to optimal, because going for perfection would've taken a lot more time looking at the puzzles. And that doesn't guarantee it would've worked necessarily in the end. I got better "almost" solutions than 51, but that was the only one that worked.

I'm not honestly really interested in seeing the solutions myself. Unless someone else specifically wants to see some of them, I don't think they're needed.
02-24-2006 at 02:42 PM
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Maurog
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Were there any submissions except for these 3? By the way, I wasn't really trying to optimize anything, just connected things trying to hit as less "free" squares as possible. It's funny how the last pair automatically matches up going through like 50 deflections. A restriction on the number of allowed deflections between each pair would probably make this puzzle fiendishly difficult.

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02-25-2006 at 02:37 PM
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Chaco
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I submitted mine, but I used a lot more deflectors than the rest of you.

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02-25-2006 at 02:51 PM
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