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This change doesn't alter the overall power of the Dominosa solver; it just moves the boundary between Hard and Extreme so that fewer puzzles count as Hard, and more as Extreme. Specifically, either of the two cases of set analysis potentially involving a double domino with both squares in the set is now classed as Extreme. The effects on difficulty are that Hard is now easier, and Extreme is at least easier _on average_. But the main purpose is the effect on generation time: before this change, Dominosa Extreme was the slowest puzzle present to generate in the whole collection, by a factor of more than three. I think the forcing-chain deductions just didn't make very many additional grids soluble, so that the generator had to try a lot of candidates before finding one that could be solved using forcing chains but not with all the other techniques put together.
This is the README accompanying the source code to Simon Tatham's puzzle collection. The collection's web site is at <https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/>. If you've obtained the source code by downloading a .tar.gz archive from the Puzzles web site, you should find several Makefiles in the source code. However, if you've checked the source code out from the Puzzles git repository, you won't find the Makefiles: they're automatically generated by `mkfiles.pl', so run that to create them. The Makefiles include: - `Makefile.am', together with the static `configure.ac', is intended as input to automake. Run `mkauto.sh' to turn these into a configure script and Makefile.in, after which you can then run `./configure' to create an actual Unix Makefile. - `Makefile.vc' should work under MS Visual C++ on Windows. Run 'nmake /f Makefile.vc' in a Visual Studio command prompt. - `Makefile.cyg' should work under Cygwin / MinGW. With appropriate tweaks and setting of TOOLPATH, it should work for both compiling on Windows and cross-compiling on Unix. - `Makefile.osx' should work under Mac OS X, provided the Xcode tools are installed. It builds a single monolithic OS X application capable of running any of the puzzles, or even more than one of them at a time. - `Makefile.wce' should work under MS eMbedded Visual C++ on Windows and the Pocket PC SDK; it builds Pocket PC binaries. Many of these Makefiles build a program called `nullgame' in addition to the actual game binaries. This program doesn't do anything; it's just a template for people to start from when adding a new game to the collection, and it's compiled every time to ensure that it _does_ compile and link successfully (because otherwise it wouldn't be much use as a template). Once it's built, you can run it if you really want to (but it's very boring), and then you should ignore it. DO NOT EDIT THE MAKEFILES DIRECTLY, if you plan to send any changes back to the maintainer. The makefiles are generated automatically by the Perl script `mkfiles.pl' from the file `Recipe' and the various .R files. If you need to change the makefiles as part of a patch, you should change Recipe, *.R, and/or mkfiles.pl. The manual is provided in Windows Help format for the Windows build; in text format for anyone who needs it; and in HTML for the Mac OS X application and for the web site. It is generated from a Halibut source file (puzzles.but), which is the preferred form for modification. To generate the manual in other formats, rebuild it, or learn about Halibut, visit the Halibut website at <https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/halibut/>.