Likewise, but I speculate that ZTM performance is 95% ZTM methodology, 5% helper.

I also support Rev's claim. He's the one who really introduced me to efficient ZTM routines many years ago, but I'd seen his method referenced by SupG and CK even earlier.

Regarding a script challenge, there are several possible points of comparison. Line count has been the TWX challenge in the past, with the Quickstat and Amtrak challenges. Here, speed is the obvious comparions, but let me point out that ZTMing can be very fast under the lastest versions of TW... as in 20K in as little as 45 mins. Efficiency was far more important when each plot took .5 secs. But I don't think anyone has written a ZTM that doesn't miss warps (consistently). I believe I've known how for a long time, but it was a fair amount of additional time and complexity with little or no return on investment.

An intersting challenge, at least from the TWX side of the house, might be to write a > 99.9% accurate ZTM in the least amount of lines. That's somewhat subject to the universe layout though. I'm guessing 30 lines, or 35 with queueing

A more intersting challenge would be >99.9% accuracy (for a specific bang) in the least amount of time. But now you're talking about relatively complex scripts.

This might help put some of the deminishing rewards into perspective. Keep in mind this is a 20K, running locally, with no bottlenecks - so real life times will vary.

Beginning 6 passes at 10:24:13 PM. Initial Warp Count: 2
Pass 1 began @ 10:24:13 PM, completed @ 10:29:50 PM.
-----Current Warp Count: 44920. New Warps: 44918
Pass 2 began @ 10:29:50 PM, completed @ 10:37:40 PM.
-----Current Warp Count: 50264. New Warps: 5344
Pass 3 began @ 10:37:40 PM, completed @ 10:48:40 PM.
-----Current Warp Count: 51865. New Warps: 1601
Pass 4 began @ 10:48:40 PM, completed @ 10:58:34 PM.
-----Current Warp Count: 52350. New Warps: 485
Pass 5 began @ 10:58:34 PM, completed @ 11:04:49 PM.
-----Current Warp Count: 52487. New Warps: 137
Pass 6 began @ 11:04:49 PM, completed @ 11:07:49 PM.
-----Current Warp Count: 52543. New Warps: 56
One-Way Pass began @ 11:07:49 PM, completed @ 11:08:25 PM.
-----Final Warp Count: 52636. New Warps: 93
ZTM Complete. Began: 10:24:13 PM, Ended: 11:08:25 PM

That actually turns up 100% of the warps in this bang, but it will vary by bang settings. But you can see that 85% of the warps are mapped in 5 minutes. 95% after 13 minutes. And then it takes 30 more minutes to get the remaining 5%.