****** MOO - The MayDay POTM ******
(deadline is 11:59 PM EST Saturday May 1, 1999)

Long version of the problem.

Information about the winner and the solution

Some observations on approaching the problem

Back to the list of problems.

Short Problem Description

This was the May 1, 1999 POTM ... send email to potm@att.com and ask for all the details on the NEXT POTM ...

MOO is a word-guessing game. The original form of the game was found in /usr/games on old UNIX systems - the player would guess a word and the program would tell them how many letters were in the correct position (a "BULL") and how many were in the word, but incorrectly positioned (a "COW"). Hence the name: MOO. In September of 1989, the game was turned into a POTM contest by T. Scott Kennedy (in those days it was the winner's responsibility to run the next contest, and Scott won the first-ever POTM and created this one as the second-ever POTM). The current POTM doesn't use "cows" and "bulls" as defined above, but your program WILL need to guess an English word in a similar fashion.

There ARE other constraints and rules you'll need to know about, and you should read the LONG PROBLEM STATEMENT if you're interested in competing.