Swap

sort it. then find out your number was destiny.

adjacent-swap sort — your count vs the true minimum

However you go about sorting the bars, there’s a fixed minimum number of adjacent swaps required to put them in order — and that number is fixed by the starting scramble itself, before a single swap happens. Your count measures how close you came to that unavoidable minimum, not how hard the puzzle actually was.

Concepts: sorting, algorithms.

An interactive you play with one thumb, on Wundr.