Want to get involved? We're always looking for ideas and content for Weekly Challenges.
SUBMIT YOUR IDEAA solution to last week's challenge can be found here.
This week's challenge was submitted by @mst3k - Thank you for your submission!
Later this week, the Belmont Stakes will be held in New York. If you are unfamiliar, this is a famous horse race which serves as the third race in the Triple Crown (the Kentucky Derby and Preakness are the other two legs). While there will not be a triple crown winner this year (since different horses won the previous two legs), we can still have some fun analyzing some race possibilities!
A race is being held between 4 horses. Create an output of every possible combination of race finishes. No horse should be able to finish in more than 1 place, but be warned there are two *different* mustangs named Sally in this race!
Extra Credit: If there are 5 horses instead of 4, how many possible outcomes are there? Can that number be generalized if there are n number of horses?
@estherb47 Does this bring back nightmares of Born to Solve Nashville?
And to solve the advanced part/make it more dynamic without macros, we can simulate enough horse races to get all the possible outcomes
fun fact: race horse names cannot be reused until 5 years after the horse has stopped racing or breeding
I believe the number of solutions for this problem is just a simple factorial? So it should generalize to any number of starters.