"We soon dubbed (it) 'Numbo', for obvious reasons"

In this chapter in Hofstadter's book he beings to talk about the project he developed along with a friend which they dubbed "Numbo". This is a program that was designed to solve problems similar to the crypto problems we were given in class. The key differences are that the numbers chosen to add up to the goal can be between 1 and 25, inclusive, the goal number can be a number between 1 and 150 inclusive, and not all of the numbers need to be used to obtain the goal. I feel like, with a few changes to our crypto code we would, in fact, have already created our own versions of Numbo; but I guess my knowledge of Prolog is still nominal so maybe it would be more work then I think.

The difference between our would-be Prolog Numbo and Hofstadter's Numbo would be exactly HOW is derives its answer. One of the reasons why Hofstadter is such an impressive Cognitive Scientist is because he looks at how people, real human beings, solve such problems and attempts to model it in a similar way. I envy the ability to be able to sit down and pick apart human consciousness as Hofstadter seems to do fairly easily. Perhaps with enough time in the field I too will gain more insight into how human's think, until then, I'm sure reading more of Hofstadter's works will be an essential guide.