I finally got around to writing a little program to prevent you stubbing your putter into the ground behind the ball when attempting to smoothly stroke a one inch putt into the hole. Here it is: # mrmagoo.pl use strict; my $test_prog = 't8.pl'; my $hole_prog = 'rpn.pl'; my $too_fat_prog = 'toofat.pl'; my $too_fat = ""; { open(my $fh, $too_fat_prog) or die "open '$too_fat_prog': $!"; local $/ = undef; $too_fat = <$fh>; } chomp($too_fat); $too_fat =~ /^#!perl( -.+)?\n/ or die "start script with #!perl\n"; my $sidx = 7; # "#!perl " or "#!perl\n" my $eidx = length($too_fat) - 1; for my $i ($sidx .. $eidx) { # next if $i == 72; # eugene.pl (hack if program hangs) my $lose_some_weight = $too_fat; $lose_some_weight =~ s/\A(.{$i})(.)/$1/s; my $ch = $2; print "i=$i '$ch' prog='$lose_some_weight'\n"; { open(my $fh, '>'.$hole_prog) or die "open '$hole_prog': $!"; print $fh $lose_some_weight; } my $s = `perl $test_prog 2>&1`; $s =~ "Congratulations" and warn "*** HIP HIP HOORAY!! i=$i '$ch'\n"; } Surely, after a week of staring at your solution, such a primitive program could not be of any use. Surely, your solution would not contain an unnecessary character which could simply be deleted? To put this to the proof, I ran mrmagoo.pl on a number of the faster entries in tpr05a, starting naturally with my own, which produced to my horror: *** HIP HIP HOORAY!! i=41 '^' Oh deary me, I could have beaten Keith and Jas if only I had written mrmagoo.pl before Sunday. :-((((( Here are some other Mr Magoos: Adam Antonik i=51 '\' i=120 '*' i=51 '*' Just by running mrmagoo.pl, I was able to shorten Adam's solution from 120 to 117 without understanding it at all: #!perl -lp use overload'""',sub{${$_[0]}},nomethod,a;sub a{$_=pop; bless/g/?\"-$_[0]":\"@_$_"}s/-/- /g+s/\d+/a("$&")/g;_=eval In addition to the Speedy Gonzalez award, perhaps Ala also deserves the Mr Magoo award, for his entry had three hits: Ala Qumsieh: i=175 '*' i=177 '/' i=178 '+' Two more I noticed were: Jasvir Nagra: *** HIP HIP HOORAY!! i=81 '$' Qingninh Huo: *** HIP HIP HOORAY!! i=34 '+' I wonder if any of the aliens have more sophisticated versions of mrmagoo.pl? /-\ndrewThread Next