Implementations include systems and methods for scoring candidates for set recommendation problems. An example method includes repeating, for each code in code arrays for items in a set of items, determining a most common value for the code. In some implementations, the method includes determining that the most common value occurs with a frequency that meets an occurrence threshold and adding the code and the most common value to set-inclusion criteria. In other implementations, the method includes determining a value for the code from a code array for a seed item and adding the code and the most common value to set-inclusion criteria when the value for the code from the code array for the seed item matches the most common value. The method may also include evaluating a similarity with a candidate item based on the set-inclusion criteria and basing a recommendation regarding the candidate item on the similarity.