in september 2011, an unknown person on the internet forum 4chan showed people that there was definitely a smallest superpermutation for any superpermutation with more than 1 symbol. on the website, it was called "the haruhi problem", from a japanese anime called "the melancholy of haruhi suzumiya." it was phrased like this: what would be the shortest amount of episodes that you would need to watch in order to guarantee that you watched every episode of a show? in october 2018, mathematician robin houston tweeted about it.