Yup, when I thought "this looks neat!" I didn't think it was very novel, the idea is very clear once you are actually looking at cheated code (IIRC my brother in law told me a few years ago - later an I wrote my code, which was written before meeting him - he had used a similar method years earlier in another university). But I didn't bother much with looking for existing solutions: this was just soo fun! I love reinventing wheels for fun/learning :)