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We study the statistical mechanics of a model glassy system based on a familiar and popular mathematical puzzle. Sudoku puzzles provide a very rare example of a class of frustrated systems with a unique groundstate without symmetry. Here,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The threshold behaviour of the K-Satisfiability problem is studied in the framework of the statistical mechanics of random diluted systems. We find that at the transition the entropy is finite and hence that the transition itself is due to…
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,…
We determine the exact freezing threshold, r^f, for a family of models of random boolean constraint satisfaction problems, including NAE-SAT and hypergraph 2-colouring, when the constraint size is sufficiently large. If the…
We consider the problem of coloring the vertices of a large sparse random graph with a given number of colors so that no adjacent vertices have the same color. Using the cavity method, we present a detailed and systematic analytical study…
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…
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…
Random constraint satisfaction problems undergo several phase transitions as the ratio between the number of constraints and the number of variables is varied. When this ratio exceeds the satisfiability threshold no more solutions exist;…
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 study the phase diagram and the algorithmic hardness of the random `locked' constraint satisfaction problems, and compare them to the commonly studied 'non-locked' problems like satisfiability of boolean formulas or graph coloring. The…
The mathematical aspects of the popular logic game Sudoku incorporate a significant number of the group theory concepts. In this note, we describe all symmetric transformations of the Sudoku grid. We do not intend to obtain a new strategy…
Despite their proficiency in various language tasks, Large Language Models (LLMs) struggle with combinatorial problems like Satisfiability, Traveling Salesman Problem, or even basic arithmetic. We address this gap through a novel trial &…
Sudoku grids can be thought of as graphs where the vertices are the squares of the grid, and edges join vertices in the same row, column, or sub-grid. A Sudoku puzzle corresponds to a partial proper coloring of the Sudoku graph. We provide…
We discuss the problem of finding critical sets in graphs, a concept which has appeared in a number of guises in the combinatorics and graph theory literature. The case of the Sudoku graph receives particular attention, because critical…