I don't think it would have helped here. The problem is that the code actually goes through the entire massive list of possibilities to determine the best resu

I don't think it would have helped here. The problem is that the code actually goes through the entire massive list of possibilities to determine the best result, and that list will rapidly get too long to be practical no matter how fast the rest of the code is. Memoizing might win back some performance, but it won't alter that fundamental issue.