Table Compression Challenge

from itertools import product
import string
import random
from sys import argv

cols = int(argv[1])        # number of columns
chars = int(argv[2])       # average number of chars per column
variation = int(argv[3])   # max +/- variation on # chars per column
answer_rows = int(argv[4]) # number of answer-key rows
complexity = int(argv[5])  # maximum complexity (length of any given group of characters in answer)

printables = [c for c in string.printable if c not in string.whitespace]

col_options = []
for col in range(cols):
    random.shuffle(printables)
    nchars_this_column = chars + random.choice(range(-variation, variation+1))
    col_options.append(printables[0:nchars_this_column])

# generate answer key, from which input will be created
answer_key = []
for r in range(answer_rows):
    col_groups = [] # each of the compressed groups, e.g. ['AB', 'XY', 'I']
    for col in range(cols):
        size = min(random.randrange(1,complexity), len(col_options[col]))
        random.shuffle(col_options[col])
        col_groups.append(''.join(col_options[col][:size]))
    answer_key.append(col_groups)

inputs = []
for a in answer_key:
    inputs.extend(product(*a))
random.shuffle(inputs)

with open('answer.txt', 'w') as f:
    for a in answer_key:
        f.write(' '.join(a) + '\n')

with open('input.txt', 'w') as f:
    for i in inputs:
        f.write(' '.join(i) + '\n')