[VA] My 2024's very first little teaser

[J-F Garnier]

Great solutions, Valentin !

Your "elegant" solution is astonish, I'm not sure I would have thought about this efficient way to fill the 7x7 matrix. It is however specific to the 71B BASIC and will not work with other HP BASIC versions such as the HP-75C, and all in all I prefer your 2nd version, not only shorter but more standard.

Regarding the 7x7 matrix, I lately came to the idea that the solution was a single DET applied to a specifically built matrix, but there was no chance for me to build it by myself.
Knowing what to look for, it's now quite easy to find it in the literature, and indeed the way to create it is far above my math knowledge.

I learnt (again) something from your teaser, this time about the relation between permanents and determinants, and sorry if you got upset by my "invalid" solution (an optimization of my previous solution), for which you took the time to explain in details the reason for rejecting it - thanks for that.

As for the low participation, there are probably several reasons, but one may be that the game was restricted to the HP-71B, that is unfortunately not the most popular machine on this forum.

(01-26-2024 09:01 PM)PeterP Wrote:  Also thank you J-F for sharing your tips ans ideas, they certainly provided me with inspiration!

You're welcome !

J-F