Enhanced Analyser

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rep'nA
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Posts: 49
Joined: Fri Jan 19, 2007 11:37 am
Location: Union City, California

Enhanced Analyser

Post by rep'nA »

Consider the following puzzle submitted by zoltag:

..168.3.......1.6.5..3.7..86.4...8729.......1.28...5.91..2.8..3.5.1.......9.341..

If I turn on all of the techniques, the puzzle is rated 3652, uses one x-wing, three 2-string kites, an xy-wing, a color wing and 5 xy-chains.

If I turn on just the default techniques, the rating decreases slightly to 3393 and we learn that the color wing was not necessary.

If I turn off all techniques beneath locked pair (using the default ordering) except Medusa trap, the rating plummets to 862 as 1 Medusa trap will reduce the puzzle to singles.

I would like to see as an option, an analyzer that can optimize the solution path, at least to some extent. At a minimum, it should determine whether a given step is required in the solution (required with respect to the chosen solving techniques). For instance, in the puzzle above, the color wing deduction is completely superfluous. It would be cool for the analyzer to figure that out.

Presumably, coding up modifications to the analyzer that have it check whether individual steps are relevant to the solution would be much easier than the more ambitious goal of finding the shortest solution path (with respect to your chosen techniques), so I leave the first to you as a wish and the second as a dream. In my dream I see the solver determining, at each step, the available techniques and then following their solving lines to conclusion. Of course, in this dream, exponential growth didn't exist, I won the lottery and your paypal account saw a very nice contribution.
"Obviousness is always the enemy to correctness."-Bertrand Russell
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