Questions tagged [kolmogorov-complexity]
Kolmogorov complexity, informally, is the amount of code it takes to describe or produce a constant object, such as a string or image. When posting a challenge in this category, please make sure it adds something new to existing challenges.
685
questions
19
votes
38
answers
3k
views
Print the Christmas alphabet
Write a program to print or return one of these strings verbatim:
abcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABCDEFGHIJKMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Notice that there is no L.
- 813
15
votes
13
answers
1k
views
Golf Transmission
As in, the 5 speed transmission from the original VW Golf GTI.
Print the transmission pattern in as few bytes as possible.
Yes I know this isn't what it actually looks like but the GTI 5 speed shift ...
- 1,860
10
votes
36
answers
3k
views
5
votes
9
answers
3k
views
Minecraft XP Orb Amounts
In the video game Minecraft, the player can obtain experience points (XP) from various activities. In the game, these are provided as XP "orbs" of various sizes, each of which give the ...
- 7,061
14
votes
7
answers
1k
views
Generate Conway's Atomic Elements
Background
The look-and-say sequence begins with \$1\$, each following term is generated by looking at the previous and reading each group of the same digit (eg. \$111\$ is three ones, so \$111 \...
- 3,977
13
votes
11
answers
5k
views
Print 100 digits of π
Your challenge is to print any 100 consecutive digits of π. You must give the index at which that subsequence appears. The 3 is not included.
For example, you could print any of the following:
...
- 35.6k
9
votes
9
answers
664
views
Print Bing's sentience
Generative AI is here! It's great for certain things, but it has a few problems. Not only has it broken our Stack Exchange community, it also makes mistakes. For example, when you ask Bing AI if it is ...
- 591
21
votes
23
answers
4k
views
"Print this diamond" gone beautifully wrong
Write a function (or a whole program) that outputs (or prints) the following ASCII art:
Output:
...
- 1,548
11
votes
22
answers
2k
views
1
vote
7
answers
476
views
Relations between interval and semitones
Output this table:
-2*
-1*
-
0
-
1
2
-1*
0
1
-
2
3
4
1
2
3
-
4
5
6
3
4
-
5
-
6
7
5
6
-
7
-
8
9
6
7
8
-
9
10
11
8
9
10
-
11
12
13
10
11
-
12
-
13
14
You can output one string with two types of ...
- 20.4k
12
votes
17
answers
2k
views
Draw the initial positions of Mölkky pins in ASCII art
Write a function (or a whole program) that outputs (or prints) an ASCII art of the initial position of Mölkky pins.
Output :
...
- 1,548
25
votes
15
answers
2k
views
Vertices of a regular dodecahedron
A regular dodecahedron is one of the five Platonic solids. It has 12 pentagonal faces, 20 vertices, and 30 edges.
Your task is to output the vertex coordinates of a regular dodecahedron. The size, ...
- 46.5k
12
votes
7
answers
1k
views
All of the Boards
Problem source: https://oj.vnoi.info/problem/backtrack_j
We have these two shapes:
#.
##
and
.#
##
Let's call the first shape ...
- 1,178
15
votes
9
answers
1k
views
Ptolemy's table of chords
Ptolemy's Almagest contains a table of chords that effectively served as the world's only comprehensive trigonometric table for over a millennium. In modern form it looks like this:
\begin{array}{|l|...
- 3,707
26
votes
14
answers
3k
views
Reverse the polyglot, change the language
Task
Write a polyglot in two languages that when run, outputs the name of the language it is run in. Additionally, this program must also output the other language's name if the source code is ...
- 1,777
16
votes
9
answers
2k
views
Yakko's New World Order
Given a list of countries in alphabetical order, put them in the same order as they are given in the song "Yakko's World".
Specifically, you are given the following list of countries* ...
- 7,061
5
votes
2
answers
344
views
Don't output the file 2
Last time you were required to write program that output a file, such that no byte is same as original file. The request meant to let everyone carry part of information, but it ends up that everyone ...
- 20.4k
38
votes
34
answers
4k
views
Zottffssentettffssen
Print or return the following string:
zottffssentettffssenttttttttttttttttttttffffffffffffffffffffsssssssssssssssssssseeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnno
This is the first ...
- 14.7k
26
votes
14
answers
3k
views
Print every Fool's Mate
In chess, the Fool's Mate is the fastest possible way to reach checkmate. It is reached with Black's second move. In chess notation, one possible sequence of moves that achieves Fool's Mate is ...
- 722
27
votes
12
answers
5k
views
Was it a King or a Queen or neither?
Input
A calendar year from 927 to 2022.
Output
You can use any three distinguishable outputs. As an example,
“K” (short for King)
or
“Q” (short for Queen)
depending on which of the two England had in ...
user108721
25
votes
11
answers
3k
views
Write a program with the smallest width
Print or return the following text:
Hello world! The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.
However, your submission will not be scored in bytes. Instead, ...
- 14.7k
21
votes
22
answers
2k
views
The second even sublime number
easy mode of my previous challenge
A perfect number is a positive integer whose sum of divisors (except itself) is equal to itself. E.g. 6 (1 + 2 + 3 = 6) and 28 (1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28) are perfect.
...
- 73.8k
32
votes
31
answers
5k
views
26
votes
15
answers
3k
views
All Possible Ties in Tic-Tac-Toe
Your task is to output all possible ways to end a game with a tie (all rows, columns, and diagonals are completely filled and do not have 3 X's or 3 O's, and there are exactly 5 X's and 4 O's in total)...
- 3,650
30
votes
9
answers
6k
views
Draw the USA flag
I noticed that it seems nobody has posted a non-ASCII (related) USA flag challenge yet, so what better time than the 4th of July?
The Challenge
Draw the current (as of 2022) flag of the United States ...
- 5,753
18
votes
6
answers
1k
views
Draw this fractal generated by applying Newton's method to cosh(x) - 1
I came across this picture the other day: (Credit to Josep M Batlle I Ferrer)
Your job is to generate this picture. This graph is generated by repeatedly applying newton's method to the graph of:
$$f(...
- 11.8k
10
votes
4
answers
793
views
Draw the Progress Pride flag
Challenge
Create the image of a progress pride flag.
Output
Dimensions
Rules
Your program must create the image and not just load it from a website
The colours can be just your language's default ...
- 347
14
votes
16
answers
2k
views
Bloons TD 6 Upgrade Paths
Background
The monkeys need help organizing their defense and have asked you, Benjamin the code monkey, to create a program that will list all tower upgrade options. Each tower has three unique ...
- 11.5k
31
votes
80
answers
4k
views
Print the ASCII Code page
Goal
You have to print the ASCII printable characters' code page (0x20-0x7E).
The output should look like this:
...
- 503
14
votes
11
answers
2k
views
Compress Jelly's code page
In this challenge, you'll print out the SBCS of Jelly, a popular golfing language. Its code page looks like this:
_0
_1
_2
_3
_4
_5
_6
_7
_8
_9
_A
_B
_C
_D
_E
_F
0_
...
- 18.6k
18
votes
10
answers
1k
views
Position from atomic number in the periodic table
Let us consider the following representation of the periodic table.
...
- 321
12
votes
5
answers
543
views
Whyte Notation Translator
Whyte Notation is a classification method mainly for steam locomotive, that classifies by wheel arrangement. On a steam locomotive ( we're only focusing on non articulated locomotives here ), the ...
- 2,201
23
votes
35
answers
4k
views
Generate All 8 Knight's Moves
Introduction
In chess, Knights can move two squares in one direction, and then one square in an orthogonal direction. On an x/y plane, these can be thought of as being a relative change of coordinates,...
- 330
19
votes
8
answers
2k
views
Convert Alpha-3 to Alpha-2
I've been developing some programs involving me fetching a vector from a url using Alpha-2 country codes (such as GET /jp.svg for Japan). Except, oh no! All the ...
- 451
2
votes
2
answers
322
views
Draw New Posts' Profile!
New Posts and New Sandbox Posts are chatbots that occupy CGSE's main chatroom, The Nineteenth Byte. They've been doing their jobs for almost one full year now, so I thought I'd make a challenge to ...
- 5,410
17
votes
7
answers
834
views
Translate Text into Matoran
The Matoran Alphabet is the alphabet used by many of the characters in the Bionicle universe.
Your challenge is to create a program or function that takes a string as input and creates an image of ...
- 2,197
27
votes
28
answers
4k
views
What's the Missing Code? (Cops)
Cops' Challenge
Robbers' challenge here.
It has now been four days since the challenge was posted so all new answers should be marked as non-competing in the title. These answers can still be cracked ...
- 1,155
-3
votes
5
answers
327
views
Output this string from the `kolmogorov-complexity` tag info page [closed]
kolmogorov-complexity is one of the tags on this site, representing challenges that test how much code is needed to output a given fixed result (usually a piece of text). The info page for this tag ...
- 2,335
84
votes
79
answers
14k
views
Draw the Ukrainian Flag
As you probably know, there is a war going on in Ukraine. I noticed that it seems nobody has posted a Ukrainian flag challenge yet, so I thought I'd do it myself in support of Ukraine.
The Challenge
...
- 5,410
15
votes
4
answers
583
views
Output a Steiner quadruple system
A Steiner quadruple system \$SQS(n)\$ is a collection of subsets (blocks) of size 4 of a set \$S\$ of size \$n\$ such that every subset of \$S\$ of size 3 is in exactly one block. It is easy to show ...
- 3,707
4
votes
7
answers
741
views
Don't output the file
This rar file, when decompressed, gives a 65024-byte exe file. Requiring you to output the contents of that file would be ...
- 20.4k
10
votes
8
answers
605
views
Biggest katlani noun dictionary in 400 bytes
Katlani is a constructed language being designed in chat. In this challenge, your goal is to print the largest dictionary of katlani nouns possible in 400 bytes or less.
Task
In 400 bytes or less, ...
- 18.6k
17
votes
14
answers
923
views
Replicate "dotnet ef" unicorn
.Net Technology is an incredible framework with marvellous functionalities, and among all of them, the most important one obviously stands out:
Yep, your simple task is create a program that when it ...
- 1,316
12
votes
10
answers
880
views
From code to golf (Cops' thread)
This is a cops-and-robbers challenge, the robbers' thread is here
You can change the word code into golf by changing a letter at ...
- 35.6k
1
vote
6
answers
264
views
31
votes
12
answers
2k
views
Golf Conway's Primordial Still-Life
Background
Note: This configuration was co-found by one of our fellow code golf enthusiasts, Zgarb
A 29 year old conjecture by John Conway about the Game of Life was recently solved.
To quote Conway ...
- 33k
12
votes
4
answers
486
views
Encode Antarctic claims
Seven countries lay official claims to parts of Antarctica: Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom. We will focus only on the claims of the main Antarctic ...
- 23.3k
16
votes
15
answers
1k
views
Loading Circle Animation
Loading Circle Animation
Challenge
Write a full program that takes no input (or has an unused input) that displays exactly the following ASCII animation for as long as possible or only 8 frames.
Frame ...
- 3,650
25
votes
20
answers
1k
views
Kolmogorov-simple numbers
If you visit Code Golf often, you may have heard of Kolmogorov complexity. It's usually defined as the amount of bytes required to express some string in a programming language.
Here the Kolmogorov-...
- 7,828
7
votes
2
answers
203
views
In as few bytes as possible in t-sql, return 100 rows containing the phrase 'Have a great Christmas'
In as few bytes as possible in t-sql, return 100 rows containing the phrase 'Have a great Christmas'
92 (I think) to beat :D
...
- 89