Telraam is a program which finds solutions to Four Fours and related puzzles.
Download Telraam.exe (413 KB).
For information, write to loki at hot.a2000.nl . (I put some basic information under the two screenshots.)







Here's a short introduction to Telraam, just for reference. Most things are self-explanatory, I suppose.
-"Voer Getallen In" = "Enter Numbers". To work with three numbers instead of four, just leave one of the four edit boxes empty. Only integers allowed; lowest value allowed is 0.
-"Wissen" = "Clear" (the four number boxes)
-"Van T/m" = "From Up To and Including". This is the range for which you want the program to find solutions. Lowest value allowed is 0. There is no maximum. Examples: 1 200 (default), 0 49, 501 1500.
-"Meld Getallen" ~ "Watch/Monitor Numbers". You can enter numbers from the specified range, separated by a space, in this box (or others, but they will not be reported as Found). As soon as a solution for one of these numbers is found,you will be notified in the box below, "Gevonden" = "Found".
-"START" = (obviously) "Begin Computing".
-"Vervolglijst" ~ "Second List". For every integer in the chosen range, the *first* solution found is added to a list. After computing is finished, this list is written to hard disk under a file name like 3-4-5-6#1.txt. Existing files will not be overwritten; the results of a new search will be written to 3-4-5-6#2.txt, etc. You can choose (default: on) to add a second list to the file, with a specified number of expressions for each number in the range. If you want to see many solutions, you can change the default (10) to, say, 1000. This works, even with a range like 1 through 200, but the output file will of course be large. (I just tried this with 2-4-5-6, default settings; the size of the output file is 1596 KB.)
-"Alle Oplossingen" = "All Solutions". This is an option I do not recommend. If checked, all expressions found (within the range) are written to a second file, with a name like 3-4-5-6ALL#1.txt, *during execution*, so the expressions are not ordered, and duplicates are not left out. The typical output file has a size of dozens of MBs.
-"Afbreken" = "Halt/Interrupt/Stop". This ends execution of the program before it has finished its job. A dialog box appears, and you can choose from Yes (stop, *with* output file), No (stop, no file), and Cancel (resume). (There is a bug in the program which disables the stop function after using the preview option.)
-"Preview". Use this to write a file (with a name like 3-4-5-6#PRE1.txt) to your hard disk with solutions found so far; program execution will continue.
-"Sluit Programma" = "Close".
-"Kleinste Niet Gev[onden]" = "Smallest [integer within the range] Not Found". You'll see this number go up during program execution. If and when all numbers within the range are found, a "-" is shown.
-"Aantal Gevonden" = "Number [of integers within the range] Found". This will go up quickly in the first few seconds.

Most operations will look familiar to you. I use the words "binary" and "unary" in a loose sense to distinguish between operations performed on two operands, and those with only one operand. "Unair na binair" = "Unary after binary": unary operations performed on the result of binary operations, e.g. sqrt(5*8).
-"Optellen": add, "Aftrekken": subtract; "Vermenigvuldigen": multiply; "Delen": divide; "Machtsverheffen": involution (raising to a power); "Worteltrekken": root extraction.
-Examples of root notation: root(3,8) = 8^(1/3) = 2, root(.2,3) = 3^5 = 243, etc.
-"sq" = squared, ^2.
-".r" is a repeated fraction. .4r = .4444...(4/9), .9r = 1, .31r = .31111..., .(31)r = .313131....
-"dec" makes .7 and .52 from 7 and 52, etc.
-"Concatenatie - eerst - laatst" = "Concatentation - first - last". If you check Concatenation/eerst, the program will start with the expressions that use concatenation (e.g. make 23 from 2 and 3). Solutions in the first list will use concatenation, unless no solution with concatentation could be found. "Laatst" works the other way around.
-"Volgorde" = "Order". With this box checked and 4-3-2-1 entered (in that order), 10 = 4+3+2+1 is a valid solution, 1+2+3+4 is not. Very quick, because there's only 1 permutation, not 24.
-"Herstel Standaardinstellingen" = "Reset Default Settings" (the operation settings the program opens with).
-"Aantal Expressies" = "Number of Expressions". Check this (before pressing Start) to see the number of expressions that have to be evaluated, given the entered numbers and the selected settings. For four initial numbers, the number is "in miljarden" = "in billions"; for three numbers, it's "in miljoenen" = "in millions". "Standaard x" = "Default x" shows how the number compares to the default, which is ~ 182 million for four (different) initial numbers, and only ~ 252,000 for three (different) numbers. The "Standaard x" number will give you an idea of how long it will take the program to complete the task. (The blue progress bar has a similar function.)

Execution time goes up quickly when many operations are selected. This is why I added the Watch box, so you can stop the program when a certain number has been found. Very often, you can see the Found number reach more than 90% of its final value before 10% of the time has elapsed. This means that the program can be used in a "tactical" way, trying different combinations, Concatenation-first/last, etc. and stopping the execution when it seems wise to do so.