Someone made this for the January 3rd prompt of Genuary: “Exactly 42 lines of code.” It generates permutations of a Babel Fish puzzle in 42 lines of Inform 7 code.
(which points to Babel Fish Puzzle Permuted: An Homage To Adams And Meretzky - OpenProcessing)
I don’t know how it’s randomizing which permutation when you re-load: it feels like you get duplicates a LOT but there’s a number in the first line of the source code so you can at least tell which one it is…
I’ve reloaded this a bunch and have seen the serial number undulate, but it really seems like the only material difference is whether or not there’s a fan. When there’s a fan you put the mail on the fan instead of on the satchel. Otherwise it’s the same as the 1984 puzzle.
The order of events is what’s permuted.
Hi everyone! Yup, I wrote the code generator, as an exercise of sorts. My thanks to Josh for sharing it here, and for also commenting on the seeming shortage of permutations. It turns out there was a bug in my “shuffle” coding! I fixed it today. Now all 24 permutations should be available. Yes, what’s permuted is the sequence. I added the fan, in permutations where I needed a new way to move the fish up into airborne-robot range.
My goal was to make “42 lines of code” be visible and meaningful to the audience. Thinking about the connotations of “42” led me to this old puzzle in particular. By going in the direction I did, I went far outside the usual sense of “generative art” that the event is meant for…but the Genuary guidelines (see https colon slash slash genuary dot art) are pretty open-ended.
Thanks again to Josh and commenters, and to everyone who took a look at the project.