Index of /vol_400/459_01/

Alex Hunger (Adlington, Lancashire UK) submits MMND, a game that puts the computer in the role of "codebreaker" in the classic MasterMind (TM) boardgame. The interesting aspect of Hunger's implementation is that the computer can guess a pattern that you choose. It uses an optimal information-theoretic algorithm and so plays extraordinarily well -- better than any human being. This takes a lot of computation, so patterns chosen are stored in a data file so a computation never needs to be made twice. The patterns chosen are put through a randomizing algorithm that makes the game more interesting to play, without losing optimality.