My hopes of mentally writing this off as a straightforward implementation exercise of well-known optimization heuristics have been spoiled. Maybe I couldn't hav

My hopes of mentally writing this off as a straightforward implementation exercise of well-known optimization heuristics have been spoiled. Maybe I couldn't have just sat down and banged it out in a few days with a little Googling and going over old college lecture notes. Damn you, Hacker News!