prob020: darts tournament

proposed by Toby Walsh
tw@cs.york.ac.uk

Specification

Dart competitions in pubs often have prizes for the first, second, third and fourth best throwers. What is the order of play for a darts tournament involving n throwers that: a) identifies the best k throwers (and their order); b) has the least number of matches thrown; c) has the least number of games on each of m dartboards (since tournaments typically run in parallel); d) and is the most exciting (that is, prize winners should be discovered at the last possible minute so that everyone stays drinking beer until the end of the tournament).