Related papers: Combinatorial Explorations in Su-Doku
Icosoku is a challenging and interesting puzzle that exhibits highly symmetrical and combinatorial nature. In this paper, we pose the questions derived from the puzzle, but with more difficulty and generality. In addition, we also present a…
Pattern-Based Constraint Satisfaction and Logic Puzzles develops a pure logic, pattern-based perspective of solving the finite Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP), with emphasis on finding the "simplest" solution. Different ways of…
Solving Sudoku puzzles is one of the most popular pastimes in the world. Puzzles range in difficulty from easy to very challenging; the hardest puzzles tend to have the most empty cells. The current paper explains and compares three…
The Sudoku puzzle has achieved worldwide popularity recently, and attracted great attention of the computational intelligence community. Sudoku is always considered as Satisfiability Problem or Constraint Satisfaction Problem. In this…
Sudoku is a popular combinatorial puzzle. A new method of solving Sudoku is presented, which involves formulating a puzzle as a special type of transportation problem. This model allows one to solve puzzles with more than one solution,…
Sudoku is a puzzle well-known to the scientific community with simple rules of completion, which may require a com-plex line of reasoning. This paper addresses the problem of partitioning the Sudoku image into a 1-D array, recognizing…
Combinatorial problems stated as Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSP) are examined. It is shown by example that any algorithm designed for the original CSP, and involving the AllDifferent constraint, has at least the same level of…
We investigate a type of a Sudoku variant called Sudo-Kurve, which allows bent rows and columns, and develop a new, yet equivalent, variant we call a Sudo-Cube. We examine the total number of distinct solution grids for this type with or…
Sudoku is a widely popular $\mathcal{NP}$-Complete combinatorial puzzle whose prospects for studying human computation have recently received attention, but the algorithmic hardness of Sudoku solving is yet largely unexplored. In this…
It has been shown that any 9 by 9 Sudoku puzzle must contain at least 17 clues to have a unique solution. This paper investigates the more specific question: given a particular completed Sudoku grid, what is the minimum number of clues in…
How can we predict the difficulty of a Sudoku puzzle? We give an overview of difficulty rating metrics and evaluate them on extensive dataset on human problem solving (more then 1700 Sudoku puzzles, hundreds of solvers). The best results…
This paper presents a comparative analysis of Sudoku-solving strategies, focusing on recursive backtracking and a heuristic-based constraint propagation method. Using a dataset of 500 puzzles across five difficulty levels (Beginner to…
We consider a mathematical model for the classical Sudoku puzzle, which we call the primal problem and introduce a corresponding dual problem. Both problems are constraint satisfaction models and a duality relation between them is proved.…
The rules of Sudoku are often specified using twenty seven \texttt{all\_different} constraints, referred to as the {\em big} \mrules. Using graphical proofs and exploratory logic programming, the following main and new result is obtained:…
Over the last decade, Sudoku, a combinatorial number-placement puzzle, has become a favorite pastimes of many all around the world. In this puzzle, the task is to complete a partially filled $9 \times 9$ square with numbers 1 through 9,…
Sudoku puzzles can be formulated and solved as a sparse linear system of equations. This problem is a very useful example for the Compressive Sensing (CS) theoretical study. In this study, the equivalence of Sudoku puzzles L0 and L1…
The sudoku minimum number of clues problem is the following question: what is the smallest number of clues that a sudoku puzzle can have? For several years it had been conjectured that the answer is 17. We have performed an exhaustive…
The mathematical structure of the widely popular Sudoku puzzles is akin to typical hard constraint satisfaction problems that lie at the heart of many applications, including protein folding and the general problem of finding the ground…
Recent research has proposed neural architectures for solving combinatorial problems in structured output spaces. In many such problems, there may exist multiple solutions for a given input, e.g. a partially filled Sudoku puzzle may have…
In this Part II, we apply the general theory developed in Part I to a detailed analysis of the Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP). We show how specific types of resolution rules can be defined. In particular, we introduce the general…