Yes, they just left two cards out; no, they use exactly 57 symbols. To figure this out, I created a file "cards.txt", with the name of each symbol on a single line. The symbols on a given card are grouped together in an eight-line stanza; an empty line separates stanzas.
yin-yang paint tree lightning zebra clef ladybug Canada bomb dragon carrot paint ghost question bang clown spider …etc.
- one card contains the yin/yang sign, the paint dots, tree, lightning bolt, zebra, (treble) clef, ladybug, maple leaf;
- another card has the bomb, dragon, carrot, paint, ghost, question mark, exclamation point…
Alert readers may notice that "cards.txt" has names consisting of only one "word" (by which I mean a contiguous sequence of non-whitespace characters) each, and that some of them don't exctly match my summary. The one-"word" thing makes them easier for shell scripts to process, and I translate these internal names into less-cryptic (I hope) things like "maple leaf" (Canada) or "exclamation point" (bang).
The format of "cards.txt" made for easy error checking, which as it turned out was necessary. (If you're thinking at this point, "How anal!" all I can say is "guilty as charged, yer honor.") It also made for some easy analysis. For example, we learn that although most of the symbols appear on 8 cards each, some don't:
% grep -v '^$' cards.txt | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | head -n16 6 snowman 7 Canada 7 bang 7 cactus 7 daisy 7 dinosaur 7 dog 7 eye 7 ice 7 ladybug 7 light-bulb 7 man 7 question 7 skull 7 stop 8 anchor % grep -v '^$' cards.txt | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail -n3 8 web 8 yin-yang 8 zebra %The (American) English translation of the above is: only six cards have a snowman. Fourteen symbols (maple leaf, exclamation point, cactus, daisy, etc.) appear on only 7 cards each; the rest appear on 8 cards each. This suggests that two cards could be added to the deck. Each card would have a snowman and 7 of the other symbols. Which symbols? Well, any symbol that would appear with the maple leaf (aka "Canada") on a new card must not already appear with the maple leaf on another card. How to decide that?
It takes a few steps. First, a shell script converts "cards.txt" into another file, "cards-sorted.txt":
% L1=1; while [[ $L1 -lt 490 ]] ; do
((L2=L1+7)); sed -n $L1,${L2}p cards.txt | sort | fmt -w222;
((L1=L1+9)); done |
sort > cards-sorted.txt
%
This takes, e.g., lines 1-8 of "cards.txt", sorts them, and combines them into a single line. Then
it takes lines 10-17 (that's eight lines) and does the same with them. Then lines 19-26, and so on.
Each line in "cards-sorted.txt" thus corresponds to a single card, and contains the card's one-word symbol names in alphabetical order. Consequently, cards-sorted.txt starts off like this:
% head cards-sorted.txt Canada anchor carrot cheese clock knight stop web Canada apple bang igloo moon scissors snowflake spider Canada art balloon bomb drop fire lips skull Canada bottle candle ghost light-bulb lock pencil sunglasses Canada car cat clover clown dog ok sun Canada clef ladybug lightning paint tree yin-yang zebra Canada dolphin dragon eye hand heart key target anchor apple art dinosaur dolphin ghost ladybug ok anchor balloon clown lightning snowman spider sunglasses target anchor bang car clef daisy key lips lock %Now I'll use "cards-sorted.txt" to see which of those fourteen symbols appear together with "Canada" (maple leaf) on any card:
% f() { grep Canada.*$1 cards-sorted.txt; }
% C=; D=; grep -v '^$' cards.txt |sort | uniq -c | sort -n | grep 7 |
while read A B; do
echo === $B ===
if f $B; then C="$C $B"; else D="$D $B"; fi
echo C=$C
echo D=$D
done
… [much output deleted]
C= bang dog eye ladybug light-bulb skull stop
D= Canada cactus daisy dinosaur ice man question
%
The "C=" symbols already appear together with "Canada" (maple leaf), so we
won't put them on the same card as a maple leaf again. Therefore, I think
that the following cards, if added, would "complete" a set of 57 cards:
- snowman, exclamation point, dog, eye, ladybug, light bulb, skull, STOP!
- snowman, maple leaf, cactus, daisy, dinosaur, ice cube, man, question mark
% cat checkit.sh
#!/bin/sh
# Ensure that for any pair of symbols within $C [or $D], no single card
# contains both members of the pair.
C="bang dog eye ladybug light-bulb skull stop"
D="Canada cactus daisy dinosaur ice man question"
all_combos() {
while [[ $# -ge 2 ]] ; do
first=$1
shift
for it in $*; do
echo checking $first $it ...
if grep $first cards-sorted.txt | grep $it; then
echo ERROR $first $it
fi
done
done
}
all_combos $C
all_combos $D
%
A visual inspection of the output revealed that we were indeed checking for
"bang" and "dog" together, then "bang" and "eye"... and so on.
It did all that without ever printing "ERROR", so I think the list is good.
That sure was fun! But let me check one more time. I'll add the above two cards to the list of sorted cards:
% diff cards-sorted.txt cards-complete.txt 55a56,57 > snowman bang dog eye ladybug light-bulb skull stop > snowman Canada cactus daisy dinosaur ice man question %Then let me ensure that given any pair of symbols on a given card, that that card is the only one containing that pair:
% cat check-complete.sh
#!/bin/sh
# based on checkit.sh -- for every card in the
# hypothetical "complete" Spot-It! deck (in "cards-complete.txt"),
# extract every pair of symbols. If both members of the pair appear
# on any other card in the complete deck, then print "ERROR"...
TEMPFILE=/tmp/spot-tmp.$$
all_combos() {
while [[ $# -ge 2 ]] ; do
first=$1
shift
for it in $*; do
echo checking $first $it ...
if grep " $first " $TEMPFILE | grep " $it "; then
echo ERROR $first $it
fi
done
done
}
C=cards-complete.txt
cat $C | while read X; do
grep -v "$X" $C | sed -e 's/^/ /' -e 's/$/ /' > $TEMPFILE
all_combos $X
done
rm -f /tmp/spot-tmp*
%
The above script, "check-complete.sh", completed without ever saying "ERROR".
% ./check-complete.sh > x % grep -m5 ERROR x ERROR Canada igloo ERROR igloo question ERROR igloo man ERROR ice igloo ERROR cactus igloo %
Am I satisfied now? I refer you to the "anal" comment above. (In other words, No.) One more thing: the above check-complete.sh verified that we didn't have any PAIR of symbols in common between any pair of cards. What it didn't do is verify that there was in fact any symbol in common between any pair of cards. That's done by this script:
% cat overlaps.sh
#!/bin/sh
# Confirm that at least one symbol overlaps every card vs every other card.
TEMPFILE=/tmp/spot-tmp.$$
check() {
# Given two cards ($1, $2), ensure exactly one word is in common.
if [[ $# -ne 2 ]] ; then
echo "check() called with wrong # of args"
exit 1;
fi
ACARD="$1"
BCARD="$2"
NUM=0
for asym in $ACARD; do
for bsym in $BCARD; do
if [[ $asym == $bsym ]] ; then
((NUM=NUM+1))
fi
done
done
if [[ $NUM -ne 1 ]] ; then
echo ERROR: card1=$ACARD
echo ERROR: card2=$BCARD
fi
}
verify_one() {
# Handle one card's syms (args) vs the rest of the deck ($TEMPFILE)
ONE="$*"
cat $TEMPFILE | while read IT; do
echo checking $ONE ==vs== $IT
check "$ONE" "$IT"
done
}
C=cards-complete.txt
cat $C | while read X; do
grep -v "$X" $C | sed -e 's/^/ /' -e 's/$/ /' > $TEMPFILE
verify_one $X
done
rm -f /tmp/spot-tmp*
%
This completed without error, but just to make sure, I modified the last card
to use nonexistent symbol "snowman2" and re-ran it, yielding:
% ./overlaps.sh > x; grep -m6 ERROR x ERROR: card1=anchor balloon clown lightning snowman spider sunglasses target ERROR: card2=snowman2 Canada cactus daisy dinosaur ice man question ERROR: card1=apple bomb cat hand lock snowman tree web ERROR: card2=snowman2 Canada cactus daisy dinosaur ice man question ERROR: card1=art candle carrot key moon snowman sun yin-yang ERROR: card2=snowman2 Canada cactus daisy dinosaur ice man question %Of course, each pair of cards shown (there are lots more) should have the "snowman" in common. By tweaking the last card, I removed that sharing. So the script works, and the hypothetical deck is correct.
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