Re:How to solve the "Mastermind" guessing game? (2009)
by wegfawefgawefg on Sunday January 14, 2024 @11:18PM
(#38997409)
What you are saying may be true, and helpful, but just isn't related. My initial comment was about an optimal play algorithm. So that's what I was discussing.
Re:How to solve the "Mastermind" guessing game? (2009)
by CyberDildonics on Sunday January 14, 2024 @11:38PM
(#38997514)
That doesn't even make sense.
Are any solutions more likely than any others?
How are you getting an "optimal play algorithm" when the entire game is about using what you know to filter the solutions that are still possible?
Re:How to solve the "Mastermind" guessing game? (2009)
by wegfawefgawefg on Monday January 15, 2024 @01:14AM
(#38997887)
You're framing it like an information extraction game, but it is also frameable as a zero-sum minimax game. And its an easy, and common solution to games like this. Read up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind_(board_game)#Algori... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax#In_zero-sum_games
One of the early solutions to mastermind was by Donald Knuth. paper: https://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/teaching/cs3530/resources/k... an implementation: https://github.com/johnathanlouie/mastermind
further development: https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.06183
Re:How to solve the "Mastermind" guessing game? (2009)
by CyberDildonics on Monday January 15, 2024 @08:45AM
(#39000898)
It just says the "minimax" solution for the person who chooses the pattern is to pick randomly from patterns with more than one color.
Re:How to solve the "Mastermind" guessing game? (2009)
by wegfawefgawefg on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @01:46AM
(#39010193)
Well the game is trivial for the person picking the pattern. So I dont expect the optimal play for them to be interesting.
Re:How to solve the "Mastermind" guessing game? (2009)
by CyberDildonics on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @09:52AM
(#39013869)
If the game is trivial for the person picking, what is the strategy for the player after the filtering I described?
Start with a text file of every combination separated by lines.
RRRRR RRRRG RRRGG
Then use cat to output it to grep and use grep for all the constraints.
One for colors that aren't there. One for colors you know are in the right place. Then after that one grep for every color you know is there somewhere and one for each color you know isn't in a certain spot.
cat combinations.txt | grep -v [colors that aren't there] | grep ..R.G | grep B | grep -v .Y...
That's it. All you need is a command line. Generate guesses from the filtered list then add to the filters.