en Passant

If you've read my site for any time, you know that I am a big-time scripter. I look for scripted solutions to most common problems that I have to deal with first. Touch 1,200 accounts by hand? Write a script? Hmmm.. If I cannot find a viable (scripted) solution within 15 minutes of googling, then I might ping a friend or co-worker and see if they've done something similar, but likely go for the manual method.

For the last 2 years, Microsoft has sponsored the Scripting Games. Solve 10 events for honor and recognition. The first year, I was one of few with a perfect score (100!!) This year (2007), I was unable to compete since I was just starting a new job. If all works out right, I plan on competing in 2008. May have to hold back on my game playing and TiVo viewing for a few days...

In my post last year, I mentioned a few tips that I follow when working on these puzzles. I took a look at the 2007 advanced puzzles and (while I didn't compete) I found each rather straight forward. Here a few commonalities that I found between the two years.

• It' Microsoft! Since the Scripting Guys are hosting it, you should be familiar with their site, and how they interact with various Office products. Don't fret too much, you can always learn more the week of the Games. MS Access would be a favored starting point though.
• Break it down. There were at least 3 puzzles last time that required iterative parsing of something. The Roman numeral converter could be solved by looping through the string and adding (or subtracting) values. This was completely different than the their solution.
  
  for n = 1 to len(romannumber)
          a = uppercase(mid(romannumber,n,1))
          Select Case a
                  Case "I" x = 1
                  Case "V" x = 5
                  Case "X" x = 10
                  Case "L" x = 50
                  Case "C" x = 100
                  Case "D" x = 500
                  Case "M" x = 1000
                  Case Else x = 0                
          End Select     
          If prev <= x Then
                  total = total + x
          Else
                  total = total - x
          End if
          prev = x
  end loop

  I solved the change puzzle by simply dividing by an amount (i.e. amount/5=# of $5 bills) then subtracting (amount-(5*#)) it to get the next.

• Practice A good athlete prepares for years to get to the Olympic level of competition. You need to practice your scripting, not so you can do it off the top of your head, but so you don't need to lookup each function, object or item you'd need to use. Built up a repertoire of scripts for your everyday problems. Start a blog and post them for everyone to read.

I look forward to the opportunity to compete. Hopefully the fires at work are minimal as I really enjoy this sort of sport.

BTW, I've attached my unproven solutions to the 2007 Games. I didn't build 2 of the scripts (the mind reading HTA) or the Access database reading puzzle.