Add comments suggesting some solver upgrades to Light Up (perhaps for

a new sub-recursive difficulty level?), inspired by a user emailing in
the game ID
18x10:gBc1b2g2e2d1b2c2h2e3c2dBd1g1bBb2b1fBbBb1bBgBd2dBi1h1c2b1dBe2bBdBb3cBg
which I was able to solve without backtracking by the use of these
techniques.

[originally from svn r9388]
This commit is contained in:
Simon Tatham
2012-01-23 19:12:12 +00:00
parent 4eb748a29c
commit 070327a440

View File

@ -1,5 +1,45 @@
/*
* lightup.c: Implementation of the Nikoli game 'Light Up'.
*
* Possible future solver enhancements:
*
* - In a situation where two clues are diagonally adjacent, you can
* deduce bounds on the number of lights shared between them. For
* instance, suppose a 3 clue is diagonally adjacent to a 1 clue:
* of the two squares adjacent to both clues, at least one must be
* a light (or the 3 would be unsatisfiable) and yet at most one
* must be a light (or the 1 would be overcommitted), so in fact
* _exactly_ one must be a light, and hence the other two squares
* adjacent to the 3 must also be lights and the other two adjacent
* to the 1 must not. Likewise if the 3 is replaced with a 2 but
* one of its other two squares is known not to be a light, and so
* on.
*
* - In a situation where two clues are orthogonally separated (not
* necessarily directly adjacent), you may be able to deduce
* something about the squares that align with each other. For
* instance, suppose two clues are vertically adjacent. Consider
* the pair of squares A,B horizontally adjacent to the top clue,
* and the pair C,D horizontally adjacent to the bottom clue.
* Assuming no intervening obstacles, A and C align with each other
* and hence at most one of them can be a light, and B and D
* likewise, so we must have at most two lights between the four
* squares. So if the clues indicate that there are at _least_ two
* lights in those four squares because the top clue requires at
* least one of AB to be a light and the bottom one requires at
* least one of CD, then we can in fact deduce that there are
* _exactly_ two lights between the four squares, and fill in the
* other squares adjacent to each clue accordingly. For instance,
* if both clues are 3s, then we instantly deduce that all four of
* the squares _vertically_ adjacent to the two clues must be
* lights. (For that to happen, of course, there'd also have to be
* a black square in between the clues, so the two inner lights
* don't light each other.)
*
* - I haven't thought it through carefully, but there's always the
* possibility that both of the above deductions are special cases
* of some more general pattern which can be made computationally
* feasible...
*/
#include <stdio.h>