Problem 46072. Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock

Created by Hope Dargan

Solve Later

Can't decide what to watch on TV? How about settling the dispute with a good old fashioned round of Paper Scissors Lizard Spock ? Given your opponents choice and a strategy ("win", "lose", or "tie"), return a string representing the choice(s) that would yield that desired outcome.
Ex:
rpsls("rock","lose")
ans = {"Spock", "paper"} %%you will lose if you choose either Spock or paper
rpsls("paper", "tie")
ans = "paper" %%you will tie if you select the same choice

Solve

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Last Solution submitted on Aug 26, 2025

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Tim on 31 Jul 2020

Is there any reason the order of the solution should matter (e.g., {'rock','paper'} vs {'paper','rock'})?

ChrisR on 1 Aug 2020

I had the same question as Tim and struggled to find a pattern. I never did find one.

Hope Dargan on 4 Aug 2020

Yeah sorry there was no pattern or order, I kind of just threw it together. I'll fix the test suite to accept any valid combination

Hope Dargan on 4 Aug 2020

Should be fixed now to accept any order of two elements. Thanks for the feedback!

Tim on 5 Aug 2020

Thank you. :-)

ChrisR on 8 Aug 2020

Thanks Hope. There's also the issue that I've been muttering "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock" as an earworm since solving this problem, but I suppose there's nothing you can do to fix that.

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Problem 46072. Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock

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Problem 46072. Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock

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Last 200 Solutions

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Problem Recent Solvers21

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