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The New Coffee Room

  1. TNCR
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  3. Puzzle time - concatenary palindromes

Puzzle time - concatenary palindromes

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  • jon-nycJ Online
    jon-nycJ Online
    jon-nyc
    wrote on last edited by
    #1

    Call a number "concatenary" if it is the concatenation of integers (written in base 10) from 1 to some larger integer.  For example, 12 and 21 are concatenary; so are 132, 42153, and 129631185210741.  To see that this last one qualifies, we space it out like this: 12 9 6 3 11 8 5 2 10 7 4 1.

    A number is a "palindrome" if it reads the same forwards and backwards, e.g., 7, 77, 747, 7447, or 2503361633052.

    What is the least number that is a concatenary palindrome?

    "You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
    -Cormac McCarthy

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    • AxtremusA Offline
      AxtremusA Offline
      Axtremus
      wrote on last edited by
      #2

      Not sure if I understand their definition for “concatenary.”

      click to show

      111

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      • KlausK Offline
        KlausK Offline
        Klaus
        wrote on last edited by Klaus
        #3

        What is an example of a number that isn’t concatenary?

        Your definition is pretty vague. It sounds as if every number has this property.

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        • jon-nycJ Online
          jon-nycJ Online
          jon-nyc
          wrote on last edited by
          #4

          124 is not concatenary neither is 111 Ax

          The puzzle phrases it vaguely but it has to be a concatenation of consecutive numbers (though ordered any which way) otherwise as you point out it includes every positive integer.

          So 1, 2, 3, 4……n but ordered any which way.

          "You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
          -Cormac McCarthy

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          • KlausK Offline
            KlausK Offline
            Klaus
            wrote on last edited by
            #5

            OK, now I get it.

            1 Reply Last reply
            • KlausK Offline
              KlausK Offline
              Klaus
              wrote on last edited by
              #6

              Coding is quicker than thinking, and this is just a 3-liner:

              toStr = foldl (++) "" . map show
              flt = filter  ((\l -> l == reverse l) . toStr)
              putStr $ show $ concatMap (\n -> flt (permutations [1..n])) [3..]
              

              Unfortunately, it has been running for 10min (exhausting the search space until n=12 or n=13 or so) without giving me a palindrome 😞 So, if there's a palindrome, it must be big.

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              • KlausK Offline
                KlausK Offline
                Klaus
                wrote on last edited by
                #7

                OK, thinking about it for a few cycles I realize that the palindrome must be VERY big, way WAY beyond brute-forceability.

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                • jon-nycJ Online
                  jon-nycJ Online
                  jon-nyc
                  wrote on last edited by jon-nyc
                  #8

                  How high did your ‘n’ get before you gave up on the program?

                  "You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
                  -Cormac McCarthy

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                  • KlausK Offline
                    KlausK Offline
                    Klaus
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #9

                    I believe around n=14.

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                    • jon-nycJ Online
                      jon-nycJ Online
                      jon-nyc
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #10

                      HINT: Finding the least positive integer with any given property is a matter of priorities: first, minimize the number of digits; then, minimize the leftmost digit (not allowing 0); then, minimize the second digit from the left, and so forth.

                      "You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
                      -Cormac McCarthy

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                      • AxtremusA Offline
                        AxtremusA Offline
                        Axtremus
                        wrote on last edited by Axtremus
                        #11

                        click to show

                        (EDIT: adding this extra line to prevent spoiler content from showing on the index page)

                        19 8 17 6 15 4 13 2 11 12 3 14 5 16 7 18 9 1

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                        • jon-nycJ Online
                          jon-nycJ Online
                          jon-nyc
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #12

                          You skipped 10

                          "You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
                          -Cormac McCarthy

                          1 Reply Last reply
                          • AxtremusA Offline
                            AxtremusA Offline
                            Axtremus
                            wrote on last edited by Axtremus
                            #13

                            Hmm … I tried a few variations with similar methods and it seems I always miss something in the middle (either 11 or 10).

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                            • jon-nycJ Online
                              jon-nycJ Online
                              jon-nyc
                              wrote on last edited by jon-nyc
                              #14

                              edit: nope

                              I think I have it with n=20

                              "You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
                              -Cormac McCarthy

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                              • jon-nycJ Online
                                jon-nycJ Online
                                jon-nyc
                                wrote on last edited by jon-nyc
                                #15

                                I have a solution with n=19.

                                Can’t be a lower n since any lower n will have more than one digit with an odd number of instances.

                                click to show

                                I don’t know if this is the smallest
                                2 11 3 14 5 16 7 18 9 10 19 8 17 6 15 4 13 1 12

                                "You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
                                -Cormac McCarthy

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                                • jon-nycJ Online
                                  jon-nycJ Online
                                  jon-nyc
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #16

                                  Smallest.

                                  click to show

                                  Here.
                                  1 12 3 14 5 16 7 18 9 10 19 8 17 6 15 4 13 2 11

                                  "You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
                                  -Cormac McCarthy

                                  1 Reply Last reply
                                  • KlausK Offline
                                    KlausK Offline
                                    Klaus
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #17

                                    OK, I turned my little 3-liner into a small back-tracking algorithm which stops early when a solution is no longer feasible, and it scales to n=19.

                                    It turns out that there are 362,880 different palindromes one can make with 1..19.

                                    And indeed the smallest one is the one Jon produced:

                                    ae32eac9-eba6-4d87-bb9e-34e37305e6bd-image.png

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                                    • KlausK Offline
                                      KlausK Offline
                                      Klaus
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #18

                                      Interestingly, my algorithm can produce palindromes very quickly for up to n=22, but at n=23 there is suddenly a problem. The computer hasn't found anything in 10min or so. I assume the third "3" makes it impossible. Which raises the question: What is the set of numbers for which there are palindromes as described above. So far, we know that the
                                      set includes the numbers 19 to 22 but not 2 to 18.

                                      jon-nycJ 1 Reply Last reply
                                      • KlausK Klaus

                                        Interestingly, my algorithm can produce palindromes very quickly for up to n=22, but at n=23 there is suddenly a problem. The computer hasn't found anything in 10min or so. I assume the third "3" makes it impossible. Which raises the question: What is the set of numbers for which there are palindromes as described above. So far, we know that the
                                        set includes the numbers 19 to 22 but not 2 to 18.

                                        jon-nycJ Online
                                        jon-nycJ Online
                                        jon-nyc
                                        wrote on last edited by jon-nyc
                                        #19

                                        @Klaus a third 3 and a thirteenth 1 together makes 23 impossible. .

                                        If a number is a palindrome it will have a maximum of one digit with an odd number of occurrences.

                                        Put such a test in your code and you can rule out impossible ‘n’s.

                                        "You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
                                        -Cormac McCarthy

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                                        • jon-nycJ Online
                                          jon-nycJ Online
                                          jon-nyc
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #20

                                          SOLUTION: Suppose that our solution concatenates the numbers from 1 to N. Then each of the digits 1, 2, ..., 9, 0 must appear an even number of times in the numbers from 1 to N, with at most one exception, in order for those digits to be arrangeable into a palindrome.

                                          So a natural first task is to determine the least N with this property, and it turns out to be 19. The numbers from 1 to 19 contain 12 1's, 2 of each digit from 2 to 9, and just one 0 (which would thus have to be in the middle of our concatenary palindrome).

                                          We don't know yet whether there is a concatenary palindrome made from the numbers 1 through 19, but let's be optimistic and try to construct the smallest one we can. We'd want to start the number with the digit 1, and thus it must also end with 1. Can we begin it with two 1's? Yes, but only if we end it with the number eleven, and begin it with the number 1 followed by something in the teens. So our number looks like "1 1x ... 0 ... x 11" for some digit x. So far so good.

                                          We can't have x = 1, but x = 2 is OK, so our number becomes "1 12 y ... 0 ... y 2 11" for some digit y. Can y be 1? No, because the y on the right side can only belong to the number one or the number eleven and we've already used those. But it can be 3, provided that on the right it's part of the number 13. So now we have "1 12 3 1z ... 0 ... z 13 2 11," where z is some digit — which can be taken to be 4.

                                          Proceeding in this manner we end up with

                                          1 12 3 14 5 16 7 18 9 10 19 8 17 6 15 4 13 2 11,

                                          also known as 11,231,451,671,891,019,817,615,413,211, or "eleven octillion something."

                                          "You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
                                          -Cormac McCarthy

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