NumberGuess | Topcoder Archive

Problem Statement

You are watching two children playing a number game. Aaron thinks of a number between 1 and 8 inclusive. Kate needs to guess this number by asking yes or no questions. You know that Aaron may give a wrong answer, but not more than one wrong answer per round.

Your task is, given Kate's questions and Aaron's answers over the course of a single round, return the number Aaron thought of, or one of the two Strings: "CONTRADICTION" or "NOT ENOUGH INFO".

In more detail:

the answers are in the same order as the questions
Kate's questions are presented as a list of numbers separated by spaces. For example, if Kate asks: "Is this number more than 5?", this question is translated to the form: "Is this number from the set {6, 7, 8}?" and the input String would list the set in ascending order: "6 7 8"
Aaron's answer is always either "YES" or "NO"
return "CONTRADICTION" when the answers contradict the fact that Aaron lies not more than once (see examples)
return "NOT ENOUGH INFO" when Aaron's number is not uniquely determined, and there is no contradiction
in all other cases return the number Aaron thought of

Definition

Class:: NumberGuess
Method:: answer
Parameters:: String[], String[]
Returns:: String
Method signature:: String answer(String[] questions, String[] answers)
(be sure your method is public)

Constraints

questions has between 1 and 10 elements inclusive
answers must contain the same number of elements as questions
each element of questions has between 1 and 15 characters inclusive
each element of questions consists of digits between 1 and 8 inclusive and spaces
each element of questions starts and ends with a digit
each element of questions doesn't have two spaces or two digits in a row
digits in an element of questions are distinct and in ascending order
each element of answers is either "YES" or "NO"

Examples

{"1 2 3"}

{"YES"}

Returns: "NOT ENOUGH INFO"

{"1 2 3","1 2 3","1 2 3","1 2 3"}

{"YES","NO","YES","NO"}

Returns: "CONTRADICTION"

```
{"1","1"}
```
```
{"YES","YES"}
```
```
Returns: "1"
```

{"1 2 3 4","1 2","1","1 3"}

{"YES","YES","YES","YES"}

Returns: "1"

```
{"1 2 3 4","1 2","1"}
```
```
{"YES","YES","YES"}
```
```
Returns: "NOT ENOUGH INFO"
```
as Aaron could have thought of 1 and given all true answers or he could have thought of 2, and lied on the last answer

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