Thanks again for passing on that idea for the 6 player deck. The concept that a repeating deck can be easily found was what helped find most of the higher order decks.
edit: I'm not sure if brute force is the correct term (though I may be wrong), it's kind of simulated annealing. The difference being I'm not checking all possible decks, only the ones that appear promising.
I remember going back to the site a while after submitting my solution. I'd been so happy that I'd given you the solution for the largest number of players yet, feeling like I had made a real contribution, and was somewhat disappointed to see that you'd surpassed it many times over. I am again restored to happiness, knowing that my contribution played a part in those solutions. Thanks for letting me know!
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Also, you are right; "brute force" appears to specifically refer to exhaustive search methods. It was a poor word choice on my part.
edit: I'm not sure if brute force is the correct term (though I may be wrong), it's kind of simulated annealing. The difference being I'm not checking all possible decks, only the ones that appear promising.