Thanks :) By brute force. I went through different seeds until I got the desired string.

Very cool! How did you come up with the right seeds?

I keep forgetting this is a thing. Thank you coders for reminding me.

As per "best practice"... I'm not certain how PHP handles its symbol tables, but considering the new function we are making just calls another function and returns it... it seems like a better practice to just handle it as a namespace import... as that is pretty much all it is

I like it - but would this be considered best practice? Very clever indeed :)

Very clever

The problem is not to find a solution any way, but to find it using genetic algorithm. In addition to your solution, I can offer a number of other (maybe better), but does it make sense?

Your solution does not apply to this kata. Even if it gives the correct answer.