Comments on: Puzzling over Puzzles

By: OddThinking » OTTF Solver

OddThinking » OTTF Solver — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 02:23:52 +0000

[...] (For those who don’t know: I like to kill these sorts of puzzles with software solutions.) [...]

By: OddThinking » Solving Nonograms

OddThinking » Solving Nonograms — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 07:34:13 +0000

[...] reading this article, you should read about Nonograms and also my approach to using software to solve puzzles, once and for all. Once you have done that, it will be no surprise to you that, having tried a couple of Nonograms (or [...]

By: OddThinking » Solving the Circuit Game

OddThinking » Solving the Circuit Game — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:18:02 +0000

[...] readers will be familiar with my approach to puzzle-solving, and will remember a number of different puzzles that I automated in the [...]

By: OddThinking » Solving Slitherlinks with Software

OddThinking » Solving Slitherlinks with Software — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:36:17 +0000

[...] start, I didn’t attempt to write a “Slitherlinks Solver”. That would take some inelegant brute-force. Instead, I set-out to write a “Slitherlinks Helper”. My goal was to have a tool that [...]

By: OddThinking » Virus 2: A Puzzle

OddThinking » Virus 2: A Puzzle — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 23:08:17 +0000

[...] Go ahead and play it for a while. When you get back, it will be time to try to truly solve it. [...]

By: OddThinking » Solving the Four Fours Puzzle

OddThinking » Solving the Four Fours Puzzle — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 09:17:59 +0000

[...] I can just set it going, sit back and watch the results! That’s my way of solving a puzzle! Okay, I admit - there is too much brute force to call this an elegant [...]

By: peter gowrie

peter gowrie — Wed, 09 May 2007 10:02:31 +0000

I finally found a program that solves Codewords, but unfortunately it doe’s not show you a grid.
It is very effective, as it will solve a single letter or the entire puzzle. Coded Crossword Magic 2.1 by XL Software Ltd. having spotted it on eBay and bought it for the princely sum of £5.98

By: OddThinking » Solitaire Battleships

OddThinking » Solitaire Battleships — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 03:47:44 +0000

[...] Four years ago, I took on Solitaire Battleships as another puzzle to solve. [...]

By: Puzzled by Software Development

Puzzled by Software Development — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 12:31:32 +0000

[...] There’s a technique which is available when solving puzzles that simply isn’t practical for most software development situations. I’m talking about backtracking. This is of course a technique where you make an informed choice amongst many options, and work through the consequences of this choice to either the solution of the problem/puzzle, or you encounter a conflict and you backtrack to the original decision point, having now established that your original choice was incorrect. Sudoku addicts are almost certainly masters of backtracking. [...]

By: OddThinking » Beating the Clock Solitaire

OddThinking » Beating the Clock Solitaire — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 03:57:48 +0000

[...] There was only one resolution possible - the Monte Carlo method - like backtracking (which I have dismissed before), the Monte Carlo method skips the niceties of logical analysis to use sheer brute force to solve a problem. [...]