Related papers: Designing peg solitaire puzzles
Parity games have important practical applications in formal verification and synthesis, especially to solve the model-checking problem of the modal mu-calculus. They are also interesting from the theory perspective, because they are widely…
In this paper we propose the first genetic algorithm (GA)-based solver for jigsaw puzzles of unknown puzzle dimensions and unknown piece location and orientation. Our solver uses a novel crossover technique, and sets a new state-of-the-art…
Exciting contemporary machine learning problems have recently been phrased in the classic formalism of tree search -- most famously, the game of Go. Interestingly, the state-space underlying these sequential decision-making problems often…
The Generalized Sliding-Tile Puzzle (GSTP), allowing many square tiles on a board to move in parallel while enforcing natural geometric collision constraints on the movement of neighboring tiles, provide a high-fidelity mathematical model…
A picture-hanging puzzle is the task of hanging a framed picture with a wire around a set of nails in such a way that it can remain hanging on certain specified sets of nails, but will fall if any more are removed. The classical brain…
The New York Times (NYT) games have found widespread popularity in recent years and reportedly account for an increasing fraction of the newspaper's readership. In this paper, we bring the computational lens to the study of New York Times…
We develop a new discrete mathematical model which includes the classical Sudoku puzzle, Latin Squares and gerechte designs. This problem is described by integer equations and a special type of inequality constraint. We consider solutions…
In this paper we give a mathematical model for a game that we call picture cube puzzle and investigate its properties. The central question is the number of moves required to solve the puzzle. A mathematical discussion is followed by the…
Poset games are a class of combinatorial game that remain unsolved. Soltys and Wilson proved that computing wining strategies is in \textbf{PSPACE} and aside from special cases such as Nim and N-Free games, \textbf{P} time algorithms for…
We prove that a variant of 2048, a popular online puzzle game, is PSPACE-Complete. Our hardness result holds for a version of the problem where the player has oracle access to the computer player's moves. Specifically, we show that for an…
Poker is a family of card games that includes many variations. We hypothesize that most poker games can be solved as a pattern matching problem, and propose creating a strong poker playing system based on a unified poker representation. Our…
The game of Go has a long history in East Asian countries, but the field of Computer Go has yet to catch up to humans until the past couple of years. While the rules of Go are simple, the strategy and combinatorics of the game are immensely…
This paper proves that push-pull block puzzles in 3D are PSPACE-complete to solve, and push-pull block puzzles in 2D with thin walls are NP-hard to solve, settling an open question by Zubaran and Ritt. Push-pull block puzzles are a type of…
Tablut is a complete-knowledge, deterministic, and asymmetric board game, which has not been solved nor properly studied yet. In this work, its rules and characteristics are presented, then a study on its complexity is reported. An upper…
We consider generalizations of the familiar fifteen-piece sliding puzzle on the 4 by 4 square grid. On larger grids with more pieces and more holes, asymptotically how fast can we move the puzzle into the solved state? We also give a…
The Monty Hall puzzle has been solved and dissected in many ways, but always using probabilistic arguments, so it is considered a probability puzzle. In this paper the puzzle is set up as an orthodox statistical problem involving an unknown…
Rigid origami has shown potential in large diversity of practical applications. However, current rigid origami crease pattern design mostly relies on known tessellations. This strongly limits the diversity and novelty of patterns that can…
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…
In this paper we propose the first effective genetic algorithm (GA)-based jigsaw puzzle solver. We introduce a novel crossover procedure that merges two "parent" solutions to an improved "child" configuration by detecting, extracting, and…
Bridge is a trick-taking card game requiring the ability to evaluate probabilities since it is a game of incomplete information where each player only sees its cards. In order to choose a strategy, a player needs to gather information about…