note
eyepopslikeamosquito
<P>
<blockquote>
<I>
I've managed to reduce the Hospelian Arabic to Roman Transform by one byte
</I>
</blockquote>
You can't just say that so casually!
This is the legend, Ton "the alien" Hospel we are talking about, the greatest golfer of his generation!
</P>
<P>
Peering at your new <C>"32e$&"%72726</C> concoction
brings fond memories flooding back,
reminding me of [id://853502|a short Perl roman-to-decimal magic formula]
(<C>"1E@-"%9995</C>) and some [id://762180|similar ones I stumbled on in PHP]
(e.g. <C>"5E$c"*1%4999</C>)
all those years ago.
Of all the aspects of golf, I find magic formulae
the most fascinating.
</P>
<P>
Though retired from golf nowadays, [thospel] and [mtve] occasionally visit here,
so I'll attempt to contact them, in case they wish to
comment on your brilliant new formula.
Oh, and you might be interested in this Jan 2007 email thread where
<a href="https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.golf/2007/01/msg2428.html">ton ponders how his winning score in this game might be beaten</a>.
<P>
<P>
I have long admired your many and varied golfing
exploits:
leading <a href="http://codegolf.com/1000-digits-of-pi">1000 digits of pi</a>
in all four languages (Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP)
... then soundly defeating the hitherto unbeatable
PHP golfing maestro ToastyX
... and now this.
I stand humbled, ô Great Primo.
</P>
<P>
<B>Update:</B> [primo]'s improvement demonstrates that,
instead of [id://592960|whining],
it was possible to beat Ton in this game,
as [id://593303|thospel pointed out] at the time:
<blockquote>
<I>
No actually.
There was a second way of winning: make up your own secret.
Nothing stops anyone from thinking of the magic formula for himself.
It's also perfectly possible there is an even better way to go
from number to roman that nobody discovered yet.
</I>
</blockquote>
</P>
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