Challenge #144: Secret Santa Assignments (BAH HUMBUG!)

[JoeM]

This week we are going to take a little breather before we dive into some SANTALYTICS next week. Just to get a little warm up going we are going to generate some secret Santa pairings (thanks to @Carlithian for the Challenge idea)! For our beginning users, try to generate pairs of people so nobody is picked twice or picks themselves! For a little more spice, we added the field 'scroogieness', which is certainly a word I didn't just make up just now. OK - it's more of a reflection of the character crabby and miserly 'Scrooge' in a Christmas Carol pre-visitation of three-spirits. The higher the 'scroogieness' is on a scale of 1-10 the more curmudgeonly the person. Try to create unique pairings where 'net scroogieness' does not exceed 13.

 

[estherb47]

Quick solution, just because I wanted to be the first solution :)  Will work on this more and make a prettier one later.....

[patrick_digan]

Spoiler

I think some sorting can handle this sample set. The logic isn't foolproof, but it seems to work here.

[Ladarthure]

Hi, my solution, not fully satisfied, but it seems to work :)

[estherb47]

@patrick_digan, that's the approach I was taking with the advanced challenge too. Still working on if there might be another solution....

[CHarrison]

Came up with two solutions!

My iterative macro ran 10,000 times without satisfying the 'Scroogieness' condition, but didn't have the heart to delete it.

[John_K]

Five tools is all it takes for one simple solution.

[vsoni]

Not entirely satisfied by this solution, but here it is! Will try and get something a bit more elegant created.

Spoiler

[JoBen]

Cheers!

Spoiler

It's not pretty, but I made it work with an iterative macro. 
My Iterative MacroMy Final Workflow

[kat]

I feel I went a little complicated! But then iterative macros are always good practice :)

Spoiler