Slot machine clustered wins

[MetteMedium]

New to this forum, so hoping for some fairly advanced help.

I'm building a slotmachine with a total of 30 individual reels. I've built several less advanced slot machines, but this one is a little more advanced.

Imagine 6 columns with 5 symbols on each making a grid of 30 squares. Player will win if 8 or more of the same symbols are connected (vertically or horizontally - not diagonally). Example:

223453
213533
113373
133331
333311

See how there are 12 symbol 3's that are connected (but also 4 symbol 3's that aren't)?

How would I go about creating a fairly quick routine that can tell me that 12x symbol 3's are connected on this particular spin.

Forever grateful for any help you guys and gals can offer.

[Bernie Deitrick]

The attached workbook has an array-entered UDF, entered into a 5 row by 6 column set of cells, which takes the slot machine results and the number required (in this case 8) and returns an indication of the winning connections, if there is one. I think it will work for any orientation of values, but have not fully tested it..... It will also only find one winning combination, even if there is a second or third (which is possible but unlikely).

It is written so that you can change the size or orientation of the array of reels, and the number that need to connect to win.

Let me know if you have trouble adapting it to your application.

[MetteMedium]

Bernie, this is absolutely fantastic! Thank you so much

I might have follow-up questions, but looking very much forward to delving into this and making it work!

Thanks again.