another contest idea

hello, anybody here?

i don't know if anyone is still interested in taking part in a codewalkers contest, but i've come up with an idea of another one. very simple, yet may be a challenge i guess

the basis for it is a game called... i don't know... "move a match"? the player has to move a match in a right place of an equation to make it true.

so here's how it may work:

player's script receives a mathematical equation.

2-8=8

converts it to a "match notation" somehow.



determines which match to move where, for example:



and returns the solution 2+6=8.

that was easy, but what if we use really large numbers and order player to move not one, but several matches? add other operators (/, ^, maybe * somehow), brackets etc. it can get really complicated i think.

43223 + 412432 - 354534 + 345345 / 5 = - 124323 + 13543 - 34534 - 2 - 1

i hope it all is understandable, cause english is not my native language

so, is this idea any good?

I like the idea... And I hope there will be a new contest soon.

To make your idea more difficult, you could make an equation that requires you to move more than one match. And then you would only get points if your "match moves" are equal to the minimum moves to make the equation right. This would mean that you don't know beforehand how much matches you need to move.

One would have a lookup table of transformations of each digit/operator. There would be two phases. First, one would generate a list of feasible tranformations of the sum, given one may move X matches. Second, one would test each feasible transformation for validity.

Unfortunately the method is very simple/easy. It would come down to who could do validity testing the smartest/fastest.