> This has happened to me in real life exactly NEVER! Do you do something applied like programming? I think problems (and solutions) similar to this one should

> This has happened to me in real life exactly NEVER! Do you do something applied like programming? I think problems (and solutions) similar to this one should be easy to find in TCS. The problem you quote seems valuable to me for its insight, it shows that you can reduce certain search problems to algebraic calculations which are easy to do. I think this is useful concept to understand, and a good mental exercise to try coming up with it yourself (even if you don't apply it directly). Could it be that even if you're a programmer who will never have to solve exactly this problem, you could still use the intuition you gain from this problem to solve others (or understand existing solutions you need to implement)? Could it be that you indirectly used the knowledge you have of this solution without being aware of it?