The 2008 Winter Scripting Games
Beginner Event 1: Pairing Off
Important: The deadline for this event has passed. Solutions are available in VBScript, Windows PowerShell, and Perl. |
In Pairing Off, competitors will be given a series of five playing cards and asked to determine the number of pairs.
Not a native speaker of English? These event instructions are also available in the following languages: Chinese (Simplified); Chinese (Traditional); French; German; Japanese; Portuguese Brazilian; Russian; and Spanish. For more information, and to access these localized instructions, see the Scripting Games International page.
On This Page
 | About This Event |
| Event Scenario |
About This Event
Division | Beginner |
Deadline | Wednesday, February 20, 2008 (8:00 AM PST) |
Points Awarded | 5 |
Event Scenario
This is one of the less-complicated events, both to explain and to perform. In this event we’ll be working with a standard deck of playing cards. A standard deck consists of four suits: Hearts, Spades, Clubs, and Diamonds. Within each suit are the numbers two through ten, plus a Jack, a Queen, a King, and an Ace.
Given a random set of five cards, your task is to find out how many pairs are in that set. In other words, if your five cards are the 2 of hearts, the 4 of spades, the 4 of clubs, the queen of diamonds and the queen of spades, you have 2 pairs: 2 fours and 2 queens. As another example, you might have a 3 of clubs, a 3 of diamonds, a 3 of hearts, a 10 of spades and an ace of hearts. In that case you have 3 pairs: 3 of clubs and 3 of diamonds; 3 of diamonds and 3 of hearts; and 3 of clubs and 3 of hearts.
For this event you should assume you’ve been dealt the following five cards:
| • | Seven of spades |
| • | Five of hearts |
| • | Seven of diamonds |
| • | Seven of clubs |
| • | King of clubs |
Using this set of cards, your script should display the number of pairs. Keep in mind that we will look at the scripts as we test them. A script that simply displays the number 3 will receive a score of 0; you actually have to do the calculations based on these cards. Not only that, but it shouldn’t matter what the cards are: if we substitute any other set of five cards your script should still return the correct number of pairs.