I'd disagree here; I still think it's quite elegant. For example, in python, it would look something like from itertools import combinations magic_square

I'd disagree here; I still think it's quite elegant. For example, in python, it would look something like from itertools import combinations magic_square = [2,7,6, 9,5,1, 4,3,8] def did_user_win(moves): # Convert moves to magic square values magic_values = [magic_square[move] for move in moves] # Check if any sum of three moves equals 15 for three_values in combinations(magic_values,3): if sum(three_values) == 15: return True return False