Countdown game

I've written a series of scripts which:

1. Create a new Countdown puzzle each week.
2. Create a user form so that users can enter their solutions and have them checked.
3. Let the user know whether or not their solution is valid, and if it is, enter them into the database of solvers. It then displays a quick table of the top 10 solutions.

You can try it out here.

An obvious thing I see next is the creation of a script to check the numbers given and confirm there actually is a solution, before using the numbers (ie, if there isn't actually a solution, redo the numbers). I saw somewhere that someone had recorded all of the possible solutions, and assigned a difficulty to the problem. Not sure how they did that though...

Comments

I don't think they've recorded the solutions, I think the application calculates the possible solutions, and assigns a difficulty level based on certain criteria, such as number of possible solutions and complexity of mathematics required.

Complexity

Yeah probably true.

Anyway, I've updated my script so it allows a small range of values for answers and ranks responses based first on how close to the final answer they are, and next by the time it takes one to finish the puzzle.

I've also increased the rate at which new puzzles are created to once per day.

Dave