I am glad to announce I have completed that chalenge. My final progie was able to calculate the corect answer in 2.12 minutes This was achived after realizeing the three conditons
A was determined by value of F, D by C, and E by B
I also noted they problably only used printable characters, reduceing my search futher.
Your secret of A<=B<=C<=D<=E<=F though didnt help this puzzel, I did try this technique of counting and it amazeingly reduces the range by half. Thanks for this great tip!
Your idea Min(sum - A, 255) realy helped me, I realize this meant B would never go larger then needed to develop target sum. So I calculated sum in inner loop, and checked for sum > target
I cannot thank you enough.
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