Brain Teaser #66

Greg Bernhardt

I have a huge jigsaw puzzle to assemble. I start by looking through the pieces and see if there are pairs I can join. Then, I look through the pairs and see what other pieces I can add on. The size of my assembled pieces grows and their number shrinks. I am using the algorithmic paradigm called...

marcus

Herb Simon (Nobel laureate) had something called the "Watchmaker's" paradigm. I wonder if that's what you have in mind. He was a neat guy---I worked as a research assistant for him for a while

NateTG

The greedy algorithm.

P.S. Would you indicate which answer was correct if someone posts multiples. (like brainteaser 65)

Robert Zaleski

Divide and Conquer algorithm

Greg Bernhardt

Robert Zaleski with the point!