Re^2: Parks Puzzle

Thank you, for the wonderful solution that works for puzzle.

Having said that, my original idea is to provide rules to human being to solve the puzzle with limited observation at a time. For example, simple observation that if it finds any color is occupied by only a single row or columns than all the other cell of that row or column are 'blanked'. simple rules. It is more about detecting small patterns in the data visually and provide an action associated with it. Pattern needs to be small enough to be identified visually. Thus, in other words, I am looking for helping hand algorithm rather than brute force solution. It is like see the 'X' if you can and do the 'Y'. In the end, solution will be there.

Comment on Re^2: Parks Puzzle

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Re^3: Parks Puzzle
by tybalt89 (Monsignor) on Jan 25, 2018 at 04:50 UTC

In setting up a game playing program to allow easy addition of patterns (see X -> do Y), I discovered the complete list of patterns for this puzzle:

Find a square that, if you plant a tree there, will cause the elimination of at least one color. Mark that square as unavailable.
Repeat step 1. until solved.

#!/usr/bin/perl

# http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=1207779

use strict;
use warnings;

print local $_ = my $grid = <<END, "starting\n";
GRBBB
GRBBW
ORBBW
OOOWW
OOOOW
END

my $N = $grid =~ /\n/ && $-[0];
my $n = $N - 1;

sub clear # the no longer available squares
  {
  my $pick = qr/[a-z]/;
  local $_ = shift;
  1 while s/\w(?=.*?$pick)/-/ + s/$pick.*?\K\w/-/  # row
    + s/\w(?=(?:.{$N}.)*.{$N}$pick)/-/s          # column
    + s/$pick(?:.{$N}.)*.{$N}\K\w/-/s            # column
    + s/$pick.{$n}(..)?\K\w/-/s                  # lower diagonals
    + s/\w(?=.{$n}(..)?$pick)/-/s                # upper diagonals
    ;
  return $_;
  }

sub missingcolor { $N > keys %{{ map +($_, $_), shift =~ /\w/g }} }

while( /[A-Z]/g ) # mark square to '-' if tree there causes a missing 
+color
  {
  missingcolor( lc clear( "$`\l$&$'" ) ) and
    $_ = "$`-$'",
    print $_, ' ' x $N, " mark ",
      $-[0] % ($N + 1), ',', int $-[0] / ($N + 1), "\n"; # x,y coords
  }

print s/[A-Z]/$&/g == $N ? "\nSolved!\n" : "Failed\n";
[download]

It prints a grid for each step of the solution (slightly more than 120 lines).

[reply]
[d/l]


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