{"id":315,"date":"2013-11-07T17:49:01","date_gmt":"2013-11-08T01:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/?p=315"},"modified":"2013-11-12T10:14:04","modified_gmt":"2013-11-12T18:14:04","slug":"npr-puzzle-for-2013-11-03-a-perl-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/2013\/11\/07\/npr-puzzle-for-2013-11-03-a-perl-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"NPR Puzzle for 2013-11-03: a perl solution"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edit:<\/strong> This post has been updated with a better version of the code.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here’s the most recent NPR puzzle<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A famous actress and a famous director share the same last name, although they are unrelated. The first name of one of these is a classic musical. The first name of the other is an anagram of a classic musical. Who are they?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, this is an easy one. But hey, let’s see if a computer can solve it anyway …
\n
\nSo what’s the strategy, if you were solving this without a computer?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Come up with some famous musicals that can also be a first name\n
  2. Think of a famous director\/actress with that first name\n
  3. Think of another famous person with the same last name and see if it anagrams to a musical.\n<\/ol>\n

    Well, these steps are clearly achievable with a computer.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Get a list of famous musicals. In the solution here, we’ll take Wikipedia titles under the “Broadway musicals” category. Even though there are probably other ways to get such a list, I like this one because the method extends to just about any other category.\n
    2. Go through a list of famous names<\/a> and see if any of them have a first name that’s the same as a musical.\n
    3. For each last name from the previous step, find all associated first names that anagram to a musical in the list. You can just sort the first names and the musicals to check for anagrams; I prefer to convert the words to a hash, because math.\n<\/ol>\n

      Easy! I wrote up a solution and posted it here.<\/a> If you restrict yourself to names with a score above 90, you get the following:<\/p>\n

      napoleon and selim iii => smile
      \noliver and emma stone => mame<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      I didn’t know of Selim III, but that’s on me, as he appears to be a bit of a big deal.<\/a> The musicals “Napoleon” and “Smile” … eh, not so much<\/a>. The other answer is better, and is of course the intended answer to the original problem.<\/p>\n

      In case you’re curious, Oliver Stone scores 100 in the Famous Names list, while Emma only scores 98. That seems about right. Sharon, whom I tried for several minutes to anagram into a musical, is also at 98.<\/em><\/p>\n

      If you remove the score restriction, you get a few other answers, including the one I tweeted about recently<\/a>. The first answer is clearly the best, though.<\/p>\n

      Are there any other clear generalizations to this question that we could get a good answer to with the script?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Edit: This post has been updated with a better version of the code. Here’s the most recent NPR puzzle: A famous actress and a famous director share the same last name, although they are unrelated. The first name of one … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coding","category-puzzles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}