MOO - the May 1999 POTM
                                       
MOO is a word-guessing game. The original form of the game was found in
/usr/games on old UNIX systems - the player would guess a word and the program
would tell them how many letters were in the correct position (a "BULL") and
how many were in the word, but incorrectly positioned (a "COW"). Hence the
name: MOO. In September of 1989, the game was turned into a POTM contest by T.
Scott Kennedy (in those days it was the winner's responsibility to run the next
contest). Scott won the first-ever POTM and created this one as the second-ever
POTM. The current POTM doesn't use "cows" and "bulls" as defined above, but
your program WILL need to guess an English word in a similar fashion.


These are the long rules for the latest POTM.  I have tried to
be as clear as possible but if there are any questions please
ask them as soon as possible so I can correct errors in the
weekly FAQ mailings.  My goal is to eliminate loopholes - if
you have a question about wording, I probably meant the statement
to have the simplest possible interpretation.

           ****** MOO - The MayDay POTM ******
      (deadline is 11:59 PM EST Saturday May 1, 1999)


==================  T H E   L O N G   R U L E S  =================

I.  YOUR PROGRAM AND YOUR TASK IN SUMMARY

    a) Your program will play a game called "MOO" which
       will try and guess an English word.  (The word
       will be "SKUNK" for this example, but you won't
       know that until your program deduces it!)

    b) On the initial execution, I'll tell you how many
       letters are in the word I'm thinking of.  Your
       program will then output a string of that length
       as your guess.  As an example, your program reads
       standard input and discovers the number 5 meaning
       that the word I'm thinking of is 5 letters long.
       Your program outputs the string "SSSSS" and exits.
       Before exiting, you may store temporary data in
       a file for use on your next execution.

    c) On subsequent executions, your program reads three
       things from standard input:  Your previous guess
       (SSSSS in this example); and the number of HITS
       and the number of MISSES.
       A "HIT" occurs when a letter in your guess
        is in the correct position with the target
       A "MISS" occurs when a letter is not in the
        target word at all.
       Your program can also read any information you
       left behind in the temporary data file in order
       to determine your next guess.  After applying
       your algrithm, your program outputs another 5
       letter string.

    d) When you guess the word (5 HITS in this case),
        you are done.  Your score is the number
        of guesses you took.

II.  A SAMPLE GAME - THE TARGET WORD IS "SKUNK"

      GUESS  HITS  MISSES  NOTE
      =====  ====  ======  ==========================
      SSSSS   1      0     since there is an S, there are no misses
                             but only the first S is a HIT
      AAAAA   0      5     no A, so all 5 are misses
      ABCDE   0      5     all misses
      KKKKK   2      0     note there are 2 Ks in SKUNK
      SKIPS   2      2     I,P are the misses, first S,K are hits
      SHARK   2      3     H,A,R are the misses
      GUPPY   0      4     The U is NOT a miss, but it's out of place
      KUSSN   0      0     no misses, but nothing in right position
      SPUNK   4      1     all correct except for the P
      SKUNS   4      0     so close ... no misses since S is in target
      SKUNK   5      0     at last ... you got it!

III.  THE TARGET WORD

    a) will be 4 or more letters long
    b) will be less than 10 letters long
        (thus wordlength = 4,5,6,7,8, or 9 letters)
    c) will be an American English word selected at random and
        spell-checked using a standard UNIX spell-checker
    d) may contain repeated letters (or may not)
    e) may be a plural or conjugated verb form, proper name,
        or anything else that spell-checks
    f) will NOT contain apostrophes, dashes, or anything
        besides the upper case letters A through Z
    g) will be all upper-case (capitalization is not an issue)

IV.  SCORING AND WINNING - SYSTEM TESTING and THE FINALS

    a) Your score will be the number of guesses you take
        (including the final correct guess).  Low
        score is good - just in case you couldn't guess.
    b) For the finals, three different words will be used
        and your score will be the sum of the scores
        for each of the words.
    c) In the event of a tie after three words, those
        entries that are tied (and ONLY those entries)
        will be subjected to another three word playoff.
        Ties will continue to be broken in this manner until
        there is a single winner or the POTM-master gets
        tired of running tiebreakers.
    d) If an entry takes more than 10 seconds sys+user time
        to make a guess, it will receive a score of 999
        for that round and will not be allowed to continue
        on this word.  Note that this is a PER GUESS
        restriction, not a per game restriction.
    e) If an entry makes more than 100 guesses and still has
        not deduced the target word, it will receive a
        score of 999 for that word.

V.  PROGRAM DETAILS

    a) INPUT TO YOUR PROGRAM
        1) Your program must read input from standard input

        2) If only a single number is presented to your
            program, the number will be the number of
            letters in the target word.  Call it N.
            N will be presented ONLY on the initial
            execution of your program.  4