We didn't start the Fire

Necessity is the mother of all fruitful inventions, boredom of all others. Boredom compels you to introspect, hunt your college computers for newer resources which would help you frame your passwords. Boredom compels you to reminisce about the days when you were in standard five.

Standard five was cool and it still remains in vogue. Everyone wants to be smarter than a fifth grader. Fifth grade introduced us to a lot a new, wonderful things in life. Co-education, morning schools,pen fights,full pants,secret crushes and flames ! Thus, when I was sitting hopelessly in front of the machine in my ‘Java’ practicals, I realised that I had forgotten something very elementary in life. It struck me, Hell I didn’t know to play Flames.

The next few minutes were frantic to say the least. I called up many a people who hopelessly admitted that they too had forgotten the same. Some claimed never to have heard of this game. I personally feel that they never made it to fifth grade. Suddenly, Shahrukh’s words seemed prophetic. Was I smarter than a fifth grader ?

I made up my mind. I had to make an dumb man’s guide to Flames. I had serendipitously found the true meaning of life (More in depth analysis in the next few weeks). A few other good men joined me in the pursuit and we were ready to kick some nice fifth grade arse.

The fifteen minutes that followed saw a lot of commonly misused words starting with b and c (which incidentally were picked up by many as fifth graders), a lot of slapstick humour, amazing unintended typos, and delusions of great wealth and grandeur. Then the code was scrutinized for any possible loophole. None were evidently found. Period.

Few observations:

1. India and Pakistan turn out to be enemies. Gandhi and Jinnah sat over a cup of tea and played this game of Flames (without the program of course) and when the result turned out to be an ‘e’, a new state of Pakistan was called for.

2. Whenever an astrologer tells you to add an extra ‘k’ in your name, it is just to get your Flames score right. Nothing else, and I mean nothing else is affected by the extra ‘k’. Its just the Flames score.

3. The naming of phenomenal Bollywood disasters like Krisssh, Krazzzy 4, Karzzzz has been directly or indirectly inspired by Flames.

4. You can’t play this game with your anagram. So when a certain Anit Ambani wanted to check his compatibility with Tina, the code bombed. What followed was the most successful name change in the annals of Mumbai judiciary.

5. The game cant help change the fortunes of Tussshhhar Kappor – no matter the number of added s’s and h’s.

Boredom is not such a bad thing after all. And yeah, some fifth graders are really dumb. As for the code goes, its right here. Enjoy an unfettered Flames experience !

//Creative Head: Chinmay Kamat
//Lead Software Head: Swinburn Miranda
//I/O Console Consultant: Pranav Rajgopal
//Testing and Quality Control: Vikas Kaul

// For your eyes only !!!

import java.io.*;

class x
{
public static void main(String args[])throws Exception
{ int count=0;
String s1;
String s2;
System.out.println(”Enter first name:”);
DataInputStream cin=new DataInputStream(System.in);
s1=cin.readLine();
System.out.println(”Enter second name:”);
s2=cin.readLine();
StringBuffer sb1=new StringBuffer(s1);
StringBuffer sb2=new StringBuffer(s2);

for(int i=0;i<s1.length();i++)
{
String b=s1.substring(i,i+1);

int x=sb2.indexOf(b);
if(x!=-1)
{
sb2.replace(x,x+1,”*”);
sb1.replace(i,i+1,”*”);
count=count+2;
}
}
count=s1.length()+s2.length()-count;
System.out.println(”The cutting factor is: “+count);

StringBuffer sbf=new StringBuffer(”flames”);
for(int i=1;i<6;i++)
{

int s=(count-1)%(7-i);
String temp1=sbf.substring(0,s);
sbf.delete(0,s+1);
sbf.append(temp1);

System.out.println(sbf);

}
}
}

`

Anyone in desperate need to try out this piece of code is requested to download it before the link expires and not flame my comments section.

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1. All smoke , No fire .

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