=for advent_year 2009

=for advent_day 2

=for advent_title New Winter Spectator Sport - Thongs & Toboggans 

=for advent_author Bill 'N1VUX' Ricker

I have confessed previously to using Perl to cheat at the  A<http://www.google.com/search?q=wesun+puzzlemaster+site%3Anpr.org|NPR Sunday Puzzle>. Some of my successes were not elegant, for instance my original solution for 

=begin quote

Think of a familiar 9-letter word, in which the first letter immediately follows the D<9th> in the alphabet. The D<2nd> letter immediately follows the D<8th> in the alphabet. The D<3rd> immediately follows the D<7th>, and the D<4th> immediately follows the D<6th>.

For example: SPECTATOR (S follows R, and P follows O). Unfortunately, the pattern breaks down with the remaining letters.

Hint: The word is used most often in the TV and film industry.

What word is it?

-- D<WESun Puzzlemaster Challenge, 2002-10-20 >

=end quote

required explicit looping with D<indices>, looks like C or D<Fortran>.

Modules such as M<Tie::CharArray>   M<List::Util> and  M<List::MoreUtils> N<allu> can modernize the code nicely. M<Tie::CharArray> provides 
C<tie my @C, 'Tie::CharArray', $_; > to alias the chars of the string, such that array elements assigned to change the string, so better than C< split ""> for some uses. The C<chars(), codes()> forms are shorthand and in a C<for (chars($_))> loop still aliases.  Here I am using C<codes()> to replace C< map {ord} split>. Likewise from 
C<reduce {} pairwise {}> to replace explicit loop logic N<slow>.


=begin pre

3 bethesda
4 offscreen
3 thongs
3 toboggans
3 tuffets
3 tumults

=end pre

=sourcedcode  mod02.pl


=begin footnote allu

M<List::AllUtils> combines M<List::Util> and  M<List::MoreUtils>,
though it's a bit of a misnomer because it excludes M<List::EvenMoreUtils>.

=end footnote

=begin footnote slow

Normally one expects implicit loops to be faster than C<for(@A)> loops than C<for($i=;;)> loops, but here the copying for reverse etc defeat the speed-up, it runs 2-3x slower. 

=end footnote