Week 4 Pareto Poppers
PARETO POPPERS
by The Weeklies Gang
METRICS
Cost-Cycles Pareto Frontier
REAGENT
Elemental Fire
Bistabilized Salt
PRODUCT
Pareto Popper
NOTICE
As of 12th Saturday July 2025 17:50 UTC the effective range of the puzzle has been updated from
"60g to 459g" and "18c to 417c" to
"60g to 559g" and "17c to 516c"
NOTES
The Pareto Frontier metric is computed from all your scoring submissions according to the following process:
- Start with a filled-in rectangle. One side of the rectangle represents Cycles and ranges from 17C to 516C. The other side of the rectangle represents Cost and ranges from 60G to 559G.
- For each solution you submit, remove the part of the rectangle which your solution is better than in Cost and/or Cycles. That is, remove all the points in the rectangle for which both the Cost is greater than or equal to the solution's Cost and the Cycles are greater than or equal to the solution's Cycles.
- The area of the remaining shape after removing these points is your Pareto Frontier metric score.
To make it easier to compute this score, we are providing a pareto visualization tool—drag your solutions into it to see the shape of the pareto frontier and the resulting metric score.
It is inarguable that Vilfredus Pareto, former Professor of the Imperial University, introduced to our most noble Art inventions and innovations too numerous to catalogue efficiently—an irony that would not have been lost on the late scholar. However, among students of the University there is one that, to this day, must surely stand above the others, if only for the unique role it has played in the history of their education.
The Pareto Popper, as it has come to be known, began its life as a novel form of gunpowder which, while still volatile, is rendered entirely harmless thanks to the presence of stabilizing salt. A small pellet of the substance, contained in a twist of paper, will produce a miniature controlled explosion following a modest impulse, such as being thrown on the ground. The characteristic popping sound so produced, while useless for combat, found appreciation amongst Pareto’s students, some of whom instantly identified its potential applications in the pursuit of japery.
The subsequent proliferation of the Pareto Popper throughout the whole student body ultimately led to a sternly worded Writ of Notice, which was penned by the Dean and nailed to the dormitory doors. Among the provisions of the Notice was a decree that the use of the Glyph of Triplex Bonding would henceforth be prohibited to first- and second-year students, with all subsequent usage subject to strict faculty supervision. The ban would remain in place until such time as was deemed appropriate. As of the publication of this History, more than a century has passed—and yet the decree has still not been revoked…
—Excerpt from Studium Perfectum: A Short History of the Imperial University, by Thaddeus Tern
download: Weeklies2025_ParetoPoppers.puzzle (where do i put this?)