Fool's Spool - Brute Force Solution in Python

main.py

import random
import copy

"""
Fool's spool number reels reference:
1    1    1    1
5    2    5    4
4    2    2    3
2    3    4    2
3    3    3    3
4    5    1    5
3    4    2    4
5    3    3    3
"""

#Reel sets
reelInitial = [[1,5,4,2,3,4,3,5],
               [1,2,2,3,3,5,4,3],
               [1,5,2,4,3,1,2,3],
               [1,4,3,2,3,5,4,3]]
reel = copy.copy(reelInitial)

reelRowCount = len(reel)
reelRowLen = len(reel[0])
reelRowGoal = 12

haveSolution = False
attempts = 0

while haveSolution != True:
    print "Attempt #" + str(attempts) + " - " + str(reel)
    
    #Check the current reel
    solved = True
    for i in range(0, reelRowLen):
        sum = reel[0][i] + reel[1][i] + reel[2][i] + reel[3][i]
        #print sum
        if sum != reelRowGoal:
            solved = False
            break
    
    if solved:
        haveSolution = True
    else:
        attempts += 1
        #Spinning each row at random until we hit the solution
        """
        for i in range(0, reelRowCount):
            x = random.randrange(1, 8)
            for y in range(0, x):
                reel[i].append(reel[i].pop(0))
        """
        
        #Ordered spinning - more efficient, unless the the random script gets lucky
        for i in range(0, reelRowCount):
            if i == 0 or (attempts > 0 and attempts % ((i + 1) * reelRowLen) == 0):
                reel[i].append(reel[i].pop(0))
        
print "Solution found!"
print reel