I'm not saying my method "wins". I'm saying that on average prefix theories have EXACTLY the same speed as a linear search. Which this script demonstrates beautifully.
My only issue with this statement, is that you and ktimes have chit all over h160 partial matches, and anyone who says anything about a prefix lol, saying they are useless. At worse, they divide the range up differently than what you are doing, range / x = y subranges.
Hmmm... but how can something that does not add any value in any way be called something else than "useless"?
If I find some hash that has 67 matching bits with the target hash (67 front bits, or 67 tail bits, or some whatever 67 bits matched in some combination of 67 out of 160 positions I want to pick), then whom/what/why/how does that influence in any way the probability of the next key that I'll check (be it k + 1 or some other k), to NOT have all the 160 bits of the target hash matching?
What if I find 159 matched bits out of 160? Is it impossible, or just very unlikely?
If we struggle hard enough, we can find these sort of "unlikely" things for any two hashes we ever pick, resulting in excluding basically all the keys or ranges as a viable candidate for the next key to check.