Related papers: Designing peg solitaire puzzles
We analyze the computational complexity of several new variants of edge-matching puzzles. First we analyze inequality (instead of equality) constraints between adjacent tiles, proving the problem NP-complete for strict inequalities but…
The game of Spot it(R) is based on an order 7 finite projective plane. This article presents a solitaire challenge: extract an order 7 affine plane and arrange those 49 cards into a square such that the symmetries of the affine and…
In this paper, we study a reversible process (more precisely, a groupoid/group action) resembling the classical 15-puzzle, where the legal moves are to ``move the unique hole inside a translate of a shape $S$''. Such a process can be…
Puzzle solving is a difficult problem in its own right, even when the pieces are all square and build up a natural image. But what if these ideal conditions do not hold? One such application domain is archaeology, where restoring an…
In this expository article, we discuss the rank-derangement problem, which asks for the number of permutations of a deck of cards such that each card is replaced by a card of a different rank. This combinatorial problem arises in computing…
This special issue on Peg Solitaire has been put together by John Beasley as guest editor, and reports work by John Harris, Alain Maye, Jean-Charles Meyrignac, George Bell, and others. Topics include: short solutions on the 6 x 6 board and…
Many games are reliant on creating new and engaging content constantly to maintain the interest of their player-base. One such example are puzzle games, in such it is common to have a recurrent need to create new puzzles. Creating new…
In this paper we introduce new types of square-piece jigsaw puzzles, where in addition to the unknown location and orientation of each piece, a piece might also need to be flipped. These puzzles, which are associated with a number of real…
In this paper, we present a board game: Square War. The game definition of Square War is similar to the classic Chinese board game Go. Then we propose a mathematical problem of the game Square War. Finally, we show that the problem can be…
The puzzle method was introduced by Choi and Park as an effective method for finding non-singular characteristic maps over wedged simplicial complexes $K(J)$ obtained from a given simplicial complex $K$. We study further the mod 2 case of…
Boggle logic puzzles are based on the popular word game Boggle, where you are given list of words, and your goal is to recreate a Boggle board. In this paper we give an overview of known results and then propose a number of problems related…
Tetravex is a widely played one person computer game in which you are given $n^2$ unit tiles, each edge of which is labelled with a number. The objective is to place each tile within a $n$ by $n$ square such that all neighbouring edges are…
We consider a problem introduced by Mossel and Ross [Shotgun assembly of labeled graphs, arXiv:1504.07682]. Suppose a random $n\times n$ jigsaw puzzle is constructed by independently and uniformly choosing the shape of each "jig" from $q$…
Su-Doku, a popular combinatorial puzzle, provides an excellent testbench for heuristic explorations. Several interesting questions arise from its deceptively simple set of rules. How many distinct Su-Doku grids are there? How to find a…
Japanese tatami mats are often arranged so that no four mats meet. This local restriction imposes a rich combinatorial structure when applied to monomino-domino coverings of rectilinear grids. We describe a modular, mechanical game board,…
An edge tessellation is a tiling of the plane generated by reflecting a polygon in its edges. We prove that a polygon generating an edge tessellation is one the following eight types: a rectangle; an equilateral, 60-right, isosceles right,…
Simple board games, like Tic-Tac-Toe and CONNECT-4, play an important role not only in the development of mathematical and logical skills, but also in the emotional and social development. In this paper, we address the problem of generating…
We prove the computational intractability of rotating and placing $n$ square tiles into a $1 \times n$ array such that adjacent tiles are compatible--either equal edge colors, as in edge-matching puzzles, or matching tab/pocket shapes, as…
We study the complexity of symmetric assembly puzzles: given a collection of simple polygons, can we translate, rotate, and possibly flip them so that their interior-disjoint union is line symmetric? On the negative side, we show that the…
The Number Rotation Puzzle (NRP) is a combination puzzle in which the goal is to rearrange a scrambled rectangular grid of numbers back into order via moves that consist of rotating square blocks of numbers of fixed size. Over all possible…