Not to ruin a joke, but does it actually make a difference for SRAM? It’s two inverters in a loop, despite not being the same size they are active components. But I’m also a software guy so I could be totally wrong.
I have no idea in practice. But for the thermodynamic limit of actually making a difference, any irreversible change requires heat to be generated, e.g. initializing to zero, truncating, or bitshifts with discarded information. In contrast, addition/subtraction/multiplication/bitshifts without over-/under- flow will not necessarily generate heat.
PS. you can also use mass-energy equivalence to extend this to calculate the lower limit of mass for a given quantity of information. TL;DR: The internet weighs 50g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaUzu-iksi8
afaik, guessing anything not 00000 or 11111 at first step will lead to an optimum strategy of 3 steps. because you introduce possible "right digit at wrong place" as a third state.
guessing 00000 or 11111 removes that third state and leaves you with simple substitution of wrong cells, which leads to an optimal 2 step strategy.
but obviously the shortest strategy is just guessing it right on the first try :D lol
Step 1: Guess 11111.
Step 2: Replace all grey cells with 0s.
Thank you for your careful consideration.