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John did not make the 'impossible bit' possible, he discovered its inclusion in the spec and recognized whatever it was as impossible to implement.

So it was an NP-complete problem with a fixed time requirement?

Edit: That was rude. My apologies.

More likely it was simply logically inconsistent. That's not at all rare in requirements documents.

A P problem with a fixed time requirement is also not possible.

(But NP may be possible to solve in polynomial time. Who knows?)

John knew?