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The Fugitive
Joined: 28 Aug 2005
Posts: 10
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 Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 3:37 pm Post subject: Duplicate Puzzles |
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The author should note that one of the puzzles has been repeated twice:
15th June 2005 - Medium
1st August 2005 - Medium |
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David Bryant
Joined: 29 Jul 2005
Posts: 559
Location: Denver, Colorado
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| Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 6:39 pm Post subject: You're right |
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| You're right. I'm curious -- how did you ever notice that? dcb |
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alanr555
Joined: 01 Aug 2005
Posts: 198
Location: Bideford Devon EX39
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| Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 8:43 pm Post subject: Re: Duplicate Puzzles |
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| The Fugitive wrote: | The author should note that one of the puzzles has been repeated twice:
15th June 2005 - Medium
1st August 2005 - Medium |
OK - when was the THIRD occasion?
With just two occurrences it appears to have been repeated only once! |
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Glassman
Joined: 21 Oct 2005
Posts: 50
Location: England
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| Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 2:37 am Post subject: |
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Alan — you beat me to it! I bet you have a well-thumbed copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves on your bookshelf. 
You might find it worth replacing the at sign in your signature block with something more wordy, like "AT THE ISP" as automatic email address harvesters regularly source from discussion boards. Most of the resultant junk and offensive mail will be caught by your own or your ISP's spam trap, but some will always get through.
Glassman  |
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The Fugitive
Joined: 28 Aug 2005
Posts: 10
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| Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 6:27 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | You're right. I'm curious -- how did you ever notice that? dcb |
There's only 276 files in the archive at present. That's just 37,950 individual file comparisons. I knocked up a C++ program in less than 5 minutes and got the result a few seconds later.
I'm more curious as to why such a small collection should have any duplicates at all. |
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samgj
Site Admin
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 106
Location: Cambridge
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| Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 9:14 pm Post subject: |
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| The Fugitive wrote: |
I'm more curious as to why such a small collection should have any duplicates at all. |
Simply a bug -- I noticed this a while after the puzzles were used, so I thought it would be confusing to retrospectively fix it. Actually, I've managed to do the same puzzles more than once without noticing until completion, and without any lessening of enjoyment. It's taken you a systematic approach to spot it -- the 30 or 40 thousand people who've grabbed the puzzles to do 'em haven't noticed :)
Sam |
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someone_somewhere
Joined: 07 Aug 2005
Posts: 275
Location: Munich
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| Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2005 5:38 am Post subject: |
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Yup,
Some of them could solve only the first one. some only the second.
This is why the germans invented the:
"Doppelt hält besser"
It applies not only for humans, but also for computer programs.
And this is not a "bug" but a "feature".
see u, |
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The Fugitive
Joined: 28 Aug 2005
Posts: 10
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| Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2005 7:56 am Post subject: |
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Thanks Sam. I actually wrote my duplicate checker for my own collection. My program creates new puzzles on the fly, but I wanted to ensure every one was unique. I tested the checker on your archive thinking it would pass, but was surprised when it didn't. Still, it at least proved the checker was working as I intended.
My spare machine's been working flat-out generating, saving and checking for duplicates for almost 2 hours now. So far there are none -- gotta be a good sign. Unfortunately it's already creating them far quicker than it can check them so I expect it will fall over sooner or later... Ho-hum  |
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