topcoder-like challenge

[Cian]

Yes, the lose-the-top-end-bits method is what I ended up with, except that

I used strings rather than arithmetic. Did you record your time-to-results ?

erm.. no. I cheated insofar as I didn't solve the original problem - but
rather the second sub-problem - how not to loose all the digits bar the
last. But somewhere at the 15 minute mark.

|| output: [snip]

I'm very impressed by the output. None of the pseudo-code that I've <ever>
written has produced output - and without any print statements too, lol. Now
<that's> IntelliSense!! ;-)

Well, that's because it's pseudo-output, I calculated it by hand[1].

Cian

[1] When I say by hand, I did also use a pen and paper.