Simple scripts for generating games from Countdown (Letters & Numbers in Australia).

These are intended to be very simple scripts used for a niche purpose. Flexibility is sacrificed for simplicity, meaning that significant rule changes are intended to be implemented by changing the code rather than the parameters.

cd-numbers.py randomly generates six numbers to be combined together using addition, subtraction, multiplication or integer division to make a randomly generated three digit target, as per the rules on Countdown.

The user has a choice of the small/large number ratio. This is specified by entering the number of large numbers desired. The number of small numbers is then calculated by the fact that there must be six numbers.

Sample Usage:

tdp@pc:~/Documents/repo/countdown$ python cd-nums.py
How many large numbers would you like?3
[8, 7, 7, 75, 25, 100]
Target is: 253
tdp@pc:~/Documents/repo/countdown$ python cd-nums.py
How many large numbers would you like?2
[6, 7, 7, 8, 100, 50]
Target is: 947
tdp@pc:~/Documents/repo/countdown$ python cd-nums.py
How many large numbers would you like?1
[2, 7, 1, 1, 7, 75]
Target is: 280
tdp@pc:~/Documents/repo/countdown$ python cd-nums.py
How many large numbers would you like?5
Must have 0-4 large numbers

cd-letters.py randomly generates nine letters. The goal of the player is to find the largest word from the letters generated (using each generated letter at most once).

The user can choose the ratio of vowels to consonants, subject to the restrictions imposed by Countdown. The algorithm here works as specified on the Countdown wikipedia page, however it still does not produce results that seem as good as actual Countdown. A more refined algorithm would be required to achieve better results.

Sample Usage:

tdp@pc:~/Documents/repo/countdown$ python cd-letters.py
How many vowels would you like?3
['u', 'u', 'a', 'r', 'r', 't', 't', 'c', 'l']
tdp@pc:~/Documents/repo/countdown$ python cd-letters.py
How many vowels would you like?4
['e', 'o', 'u', 'o', 't', 'g', 'w', 'l', 'm']
tdp@pc:~/Documents/repo/countdown$ python cd-letters.py
How many vowels would you like?0
Must have 3-5 vowels and 4-6 consonants