Despite being shocked that Jasper and I had totally different 101 stroke solutions to the Saving Time challenge, I had a feeling that Rhebus and I would have similar solutions to this one. There just seemed to be much less scope for magic formulae and general weirdness in the beer bottle game. I've contacted Rhebus and am pleased to report that he was as curious as I was and happy to compare our solutions in the hope of unearthing an even shorter one. Here is his 162 stroke winning entry:

@a=(++$a." bottle$& of beer",on,the,wall),s/^/
Take one down and pass it around, @a.

@a, $a[0]./,/s/until/
99/;print"99$'
Go to the store and buy some more, @a."
[download]

If you compare his with mine:

/s/until@c=(@b=(++$n,bottle.$&,of,beer),on,the,wall),s/^/Take one down
+ and pass it around, @c.

@c, @b.
/,/, 99.*

/;print$'."Go to the store and buy some more$&"
[download]

you'll see some similarities and some differences. The major difference is that Rhebus used a five stroke shorter terminating regex, namely /\n99/ instead of my /, 99.*\n\n/, that unfortunately cost five strokes elsewhere: two strokes for the extra 99 at the front of the printed string and three for the terminating , @a. (instead of $&) at its end.

Can these two solutions be combined somehow to produce a shorter one? I can assure you that many variations are possible but I couldn't find any reductions. So if you can further shorten it, you can claim to be the inventor of the shortest solution to the most popular golf game of all. :)

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