I was going to fork this kata and update the description to one which makes the author's intent the only valid interpretation, but I can't think of how to do so without taking away the "puzzle" aspect of the kata.

I agree that the description is definitely vague and requires a lot of "guess what the author was thinking", which really isn't great. There are many other possible solutions (such as your suggested three-fold technique), and they can produce valid arrangements which use fewer hooks. A curtain with length 240 and hooks spaced apart at most 80 units would require 5 hooks according to the author, but your technique only uses 4 while satisfying the constraints, for example.

hi,

Is that normal that the ref solution along with the random string generation take more than 10s on their own, in python? How much of this is taken by the random generator?

Hi. I'm afraid it will take longer than expected, because my computer died :(
Sorry for the delay...

sure does :)

Thanks a lot for the translation!!
I'm not sure I'll have time to check this out during the weekend, but I'll have a look at this next week.

Empty string is not zero, the OP explictly tests for zero.

It may have ;-)
But it looks like you got the last word. Well done!

Yep once had similiar assignment revolving around threads for each elevator. Didn't work for anyone and the prof cancelled the assignment :o