On 24.10.2012 22:28, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
@Regina,
Yes, Wizard is a reference to the level of mastery that a solver must
possess, and is one of those "which one of these words does not belong"
solutions.
There is a well-known *logarithmic* difficulty scale that has been used
over 40 years for problem difficulty. It might be worth adapting:
(after unknown),
00 easy - immediately solvable by someone willing to do it
10 simple - takes minutes
20 medium, average - quarter hour
30 moderate, an evening
40 difficult, challenging, non-trivial (term project, GSoC...)
50 unsolved, deep, requires a breakthrough, research
(PhD dissertation)
60 intractable (that I just made up - probably not something that
is technically feasible regardless of skill, Nobel Prize,
P = NP, etc.)
Is this not similar to what Knuth used (uses) in his "Art of Computer
Programming" series?
-Andre