Where were you when a 4chan weeb solved the superpermutation problem?

In more practical terms, say there is a series of several episodes labeled not chronologically, but absolutely arbitrary. And the series is so bad that you have no way of determining the correct order from the content. If you are determined to watch them the right way at least once, you can start a marathon, playing the episodes again and again until all possible order variants are complete.

The example may seem hypothetical, but it was not for fans of an anime called “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya”, the first season of which contains 14 episodes. It was broadcast in a non-chronological order – as an acknowledgment of its theme of time travel – so fans of the anime have a fad of rearranging and rewatching it again and again.

So in September 2011 somebody asked on 4chan how long it may take if one were to watch Haruhi in every possible order. And another anonymous poster offered a solution – thus solving the problem of the lower bond for the minimal length of a superpermutation. Jay Pantone, a mathematician at Marquette University, translated the 4chan solution into a formal layout for mathematicians and believes the proof holds up.