Summarize and say sequence
There are several ways to generate a self-referential sequence. One very common one is to start with a positive integer, then generate the next term by concatenating enumerated groups of adjacent alike digits:
0, 10, 1110, 3110, 132110, 13122110, 111311222110 ...
The terms generated grow in length geometrically and never converge.
Another way to generate a self-referential sequence is to summarize the previous term.
Count how many of each alike digit there is, then then concatenate the sum and digit for each of the sorted enumerated digits. Note that the first five terms are the same as for the previous sequence.
0, 10, 1110, 3110, 132110, 13123110, 23124110 ... see The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
Sort the digits largest to smallest. Do not include counts of digits that do not appear in the previous term. This means that if there is not a zero in the seed, it can never appear in the sequence since you don't include it if there is zero of any missing digits.
Depending on the seed value, series generated this way always either converge to a stable value or to a short cyclical pattern. (For our purposes, I'll use converge to mean an element matches a previously seen element.) The sequence shown, with a seed value of 0, converges to a stable value of 1433223110 after 11 iterations. The seed value that converges most quickly is 22. It goes stable after the first element. (The next element is 22, which has been seen before.)
Task:
Find all the positive integer seed values under 1000000, for the above convergent self-referential sequence, that takes the largest number of iterations before converging. Then print out the number of iterations and the sequence they return. Note that different permutations of the digits of the seed will yield the same sequence. For this task, assume leading zeros are not permitted.
Seed Value(s): 9009 9090 9900 Iterations: 21 Sequence: (same for all three seeds except for first element) 9009 2920 192210 19222110 19323110 1923123110 1923224110 191413323110 191433125110 19151423125110 19251413226110 1916151413325110 1916251423127110 191716151413326110 191726151423128110 19181716151413327110 19182716151423129110 29181716151413328110 19281716151423228110 19281716151413427110 19182716152413228110