[Mark Hamilton]

Last year FIRST changed the algorithm to garuntee teams had a certain minimum amount of time between matches (I heard 10 min. but I'm not certain). This was a good idea, but had an unexpected consequence. After the first round of matches was randomly allocated, the computer had to start picking a second round. Unfortunately, the 10 minute rule meant when it came time to pick a second round, instead of choosing from the large pool of teams, it could only pick from the small pool of teams that had had 10 minutes, but hadn't been assigned to another match. The only teams that fit that criteria are the teams that were in the same match roughly 10 minutes ago. This meant teams saw the same teams over and over again throughtout the competition.

The Challenge: Design an algorithm in the language of your choice (or even just pseudocode) that creates a random distribution of teams, but still allows for each team to have a predetermined minimum amount of time between matches.

Remember that FIRST will probably want to implement this randomizing function in Filemaker Pro, so it needs to be done without extremely exotic math functions.

Come up with a working solution and I'll try to make a Filemaker Pro script out of it and try to talk the people at FIRST into using it. If possible please include a sample output with your idea.