The card gameWar is interesting in that the final outcome is entirely determined by the initial arrangement of the deck, so long as certain rules are followed for the order in which cards are picked up from the playing field and moved to decks. In this challenge, there will only be 2 players, simplifying things greatly.
The Game
- Each player is dealt a deck of 26 cards.
- Each player places the top card in their deck face-up. The player with the higher-ranking card (
Ace > King > Queen > Jack > 10 > 9 > 8 > 7 > 6 > 5 > 4 > 3 > 2) wins the round, and places their card on top of their opponent's card, flips them over, and adds them to the bottom of their deck (so their winning card is on the bottom of the deck, and the other player's losing card is just above it). This is done until one of the players runs out of cards.- If the cards are of equal rank, then each player places the top 2 cards of their deck face-up on top of their previous card (so that the card that was on top of the deck is the second card in the stack, and the card that was second-from-top is on top). Then, the ranks (of the top card of each stack) are compared again, and the winner places their entire stack on top of the loser's entire stack, turns the stack upside-down, and places it on the bottom of their deck. If there is another tie, more cards are played in the same way, until a winner is chosen or one player runs out of cards.
If at any point one of the players needs to draw a card from their deck, but their deck is empty, they immediately lose the game.
The Challenge
Given two lists of cards in the players' decks, in any convenient format, output a truthy value if Player 1 wins, and a falsey value if Player 2 wins.
For convenience, a 10 card will be represented with aT, and face cards will be abbreviated (Ace -> A, King -> K, Queen -> Q, Jack -> J), so that all cards are one character long. Alternatively, ranks may be represented with decimal integers 2-14 (Jack -> 11, Queen -> 12, King -> 13, Ace -> 14) or hex digits 2-E (10 -> A, Jack -> B, Queen -> C, King -> D, Ace -> E). Since suits don't matter, suit information will not be given.
- You may assume that all games will terminate at some point (though it may take a very long time), and one player will always run out of cards before the other.
- Each player places cards simultaneously, and one card at a time, so there is never any ambiguity about which player ran out of cards first.
Test Cases
The test cases use23456789ABCDE to represent the ranks (in ascending order).
D58B35926B92C7C4C7E8D3DAA2, 8E47C38A2DEA43467EB9566B95 -> False669D9D846D4B3BA52452C2EDEB, E747CA988CC76723935A3B8EA5 -> False5744B95ECDC6D325B28A782A72, 68394D9DA96EBBA8533EE7C6C4 -> True87DB6C7EBC6C8D722389923DC6, E28435DBEBEA543AA47956594A -> False589EAB9DCD43E9EC264A5726A8, 48DC2577BD68AB9335263B7EC4 -> TrueE3698D7C46A739AE5BE2C49286, BB54B7D78954ED526A83C3CDA2 -> True32298B5E785DC394467D5C9CB2, 5ED6AAD93E873EA628B6A4BC47 -> TrueB4AB985B34756C624C92DE5E97, 3EDD5BA2A68397C26CE837AD48 -> False9A6D9A5457BB6ACBC5E8D7D4A9, 73E658CE2C3E289B837422D463 -> True96E64D226BC8B7D6C5974BAE32, 58DC7A8C543E35978AEBA34D29 -> TrueC2978A35E74D7652BA9762C458, 9A9BB332BE8C8DD44CE3DE66A5 -> FalseBEDB44E947693CD284923CEA82, 8CC3B75756255A683A6AB9E7DD -> FalseEEDDCCBBAA8877665544332299, EEDDCCBBAA9988776655443322 -> FalseEEDDCCBBAA9988776655443322, DDCCBBAA9988776655443E3E22 -> True
Reference Implementation
This reference implementation is written in Python 3, and takes input in the same format as the test cases (except separated by a newline instead of a comma and a space).
#!/usr/bin/env python3from collections import dequep1, p2 = [deque(s) for s in (input(),input())]print(''.join(p1))print(''.join(p2))try: while p1 and p2: p1s = [p1.popleft()] p2s = [p2.popleft()] while p1s[-1] == p2s[-1]: p1s.append(p1.popleft()) p2s.append(p2.popleft()) p1s.append(p1.popleft()) p2s.append(p2.popleft()) if p1s[-1] > p2s[-1]: p1.extend(p2s+p1s) else: p2.extend(p1s+p2s)except IndexError: passfinally: print(len(p1) > 0)
