NP-
NP-: /N-P/ pref. Extremely. Used to modify adjectives
describing a level or quality of difficulty; the connotation is
often `more so than it should be' This is generalized from the
computer-science terms `NP-hard' and `NP-complete'; NP-complete
problems all seem to be very hard, but so far no one has found a
proof that they are. NP is the set of Nondeterministic-Polynomial
algorithms, those that can be completed by a nondeterministic Turing
machine in an amount of time that is a polynomial function of the
size of the input; a solution for one NP-complete problem would
solve all the others. "Coding a BitBlt implementation to perform
correctly in every case is NP-annoying."
Note, however, that strictly speaking this usage is misleading;
there are plenty of easy problems in class NP. NP-complete problems
are hard not because they are in class NP, but because they are the
hardest problems in class NP.
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