My first experience with this kind of brute force solver for a problem that isn't really a problem was actually 'wristwatch', not 'scunthorpe'. This was in the

My first experience with this kind of brute force solver for a problem that isn't really a problem was actually 'wristwatch', not 'scunthorpe'. This was in the very early 1990's, and on a BBS, not an Internet-based system. But I gather Scunthorpe was the first widely reported example.