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PostPosted: Sat Mar 10, 2012 10:21 pm 
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Hi all

I've been working on basic support for Futoshiki in SudokuSolver - and have a first working version.

I'm looking for some good 9x9 example puzzles to throw at it for testing. Does anyone have a good source I could tap into?

Image

Rgds
Richard


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PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 12:31 pm 
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Richard,

Here are a couple of puzzles I pull out from a quick google search:

http://www.sachsentext.de/en/node/680
http://www.djape.net/sudoku/wp/2006/04/ ... u-puzzles/

There is also a flash game which can generate random puzzles:

http://www.novelgames.com/flashgames/game.php?id=178

Hope it helps.

Hopefully in your new version one can add random inequality signs to a blank grid, unlike in JSudoku where one can only remove those signs from a full grid (which is very tedious for a puzzle with only a few such signs :rambo:).


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PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 3:24 pm 
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Thanks

I'll check them out. I'm having to implement Latin Square (or removing Nonet constraints) at the same time, as most of the puzzles don't have Nonets. At some point I'll also need to look at something other than 9x9 base grid, as many seem to be smaller grids.

In my current working prototype, the definition starts with a blank grid and the constraints are added by clicking on the cell border which then cycles through the greater than/less than/no constraints. I'm thinking of also having menu/keyboard shortcut to define the boundaries between cells that have been selected.

I'm also looking at what the text string representation should be for facilitating import/export. It doesn't look like JS supports anything other than its own internal format, and things like Cross-A are very verbose. I'm thinking of a 243 character string with each of the 81 cells represented by 3 characters: NRB - with N being a defined digit (or .) R being the right cell constraint (< > or ? .) and B being the bottom cell constraint (^ v or ? .) Although the "R" is redundant for column 9 and "B" is redundant for row 9, it would make it a lot simpler to keep them in the string. So a puzzle might look like this

Code:
..v..v.....^...8.V........V
....>.....<..<.....>....8..
..........................^
........v....>^..v....<v...
.....v....>.....>.....>....
.^.........v.<v.<..........
.<...^..^..^.>............v
................<...^......
2.....8..9...>.......5<....


or

Code:
.?v.?v.??.?^.??8?V.??.??.?V
.??.>?.??.<?.<?.??.>?.??8??
.??.??.??.??.??.??.??.??.?^
.??.??.?v.??.>^.?v.??.<v.??
.??.?v.??.>?.??.>?.??.>?.??
.^?.??.??.?v.<v.<?.??.??.??
.<?.?^.?^.?^.>?.??.??.??.?v
.??.??.??.??.??.<?.?^.??.??
2??.??8??9??.>?.??.??5<?.??


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PostPosted: Fri Mar 16, 2012 7:22 pm 
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Thanks Richard,

Your 243-character scheme is indeed a very nice and intuitive way to represent these puzzles.

Just want to add that the killersudokuonline website also has been posting "Greater Than Sudoku" puzzles since 2006. There are already 2000+ daily puzzles plus 300+ weekly ones (which are generally of higher difficulty). So plenty of testing data for you. Here is the link to the archive page:

http://www.killersudokuonline.com/archives.html

(Note some of those puzzles don't have the full 144 inequality signs on the board.)

There are also 300+ "Greater Than Killer Sudoku" puzzles where the inequality signs apply to cages instead of cells. But whether to implement this feature into your software is up to you. ;-)


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 3:44 pm 
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rcbroughton wrote:
I'm also looking at what the text string representation should be for facilitating import/export. It doesn't look like JS supports anything other than its own internal format, and things like Cross-A are very verbose. I'm thinking of a 243 character string with each of the 81 cells represented by 3 characters:
This is excellent. You would want to find a way to store these creations in line format. Text cells & databases will consume less storage space & memory when dealing with less than 256 characters. Some don't even support text strings greater than 255 characters long.


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