Countdown

Discussion around the SwissMicros DM42 calculator
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ijabbott
Posts: 253
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 2:34 pm
Location: GB-MAN

Re: Countdown

Post by ijabbott »

If register space was an issue (which it probably isn't), you could pack a few small integers (5 bits each) into a single register.
Bill (Smithville NJ)
Posts: 34
Joined: Sat Jul 22, 2017 9:14 pm

Re: Countdown

Post by Bill (Smithville NJ) »

MikeOR wrote:
Sat Jun 30, 2018 5:13 pm
You lost me, Bill. I'm not yet conversant with matrices, but I'm willing to learn
Think of the Matrix as an ARRAY.

I'm not familiar with Countdown, but from what I can gather on the Web
(Please correct me if I have this all wrong):

There are two Stacks of Letter Tiles, one containing Vowels and one containing Consonants.
The number of letters in the stack correspond to their frequency in natural English. Thus there
is only one "Q" but six "T". Likewise there are nine "A" and only two "Y". If we use the Scrabble set of
tiles, then there are 54 Consonants and 44 vowels.

You could set up two matrices, or arrays, one for Vowels and one for consonants.
The vowel array would be [1x44] and the consonant array [1x54].

There would be a third array, Letters [2x54]. Row one would contain all the consonant letters,
ie, two "B" two "C", four "D", etc. Row two would contain all the vowels, ie, nine "A", twelve "E, etc.

To initialize the game, loop through Row One of Letters, create a random number from 1 to 54, and then insert
that letter into the Consonant stack matrix. Then do the same for Row Two for the vowels.

You now have two Matrices (arrays) that would mimic the letter stack of tiles. As the contestant selects a letter,
vowel or consonant, just select the next one from the Matrix (array).

From the description of the program, I could not tell if they re-initialized the letter stacks at the start of each game.
Also unsure if the stack is only one level deep. There was also a comment made that the program director would
every so often mix up the frequency of letters - what even that means.

While the Letter portion of the program is interesting, the Numbers portion is also
very interesting. Would it be possible to program on a calculator the simulation of the numbers part.

Bill
Smithville, NJ
MikeOR
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu Jun 21, 2018 3:47 pm

Re: Countdown

Post by MikeOR »

I've adjusted my data to comply with the Scrabble distribution. Everything works fine, except I get an unusual occurrence of repeated letters, especially Vowels. I am trying to figure this out
MikeOR
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu Jun 21, 2018 3:47 pm

Re: Countdown

Post by MikeOR »

It seems to have sorted itself out without any change in the process 😂
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