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The classic textbook example of the use of backtracking is the eight queens puzzle, that asks for all arrangements of eight chess queens on a standard chessboard so that no queen attacks any other. In the common backtracking approach, the partial candidates are arrangements of k queens in the first k rows of the board, all in different rows and ...
There are 92 solutions. The problem was first posed in the mid-19th century. In the modern era, it is often used as an example problem for various computer programming techniques. The eight queens puzzle is a special case of the more general n queens problem of placing n non-attacking queens on an n×n chessboard.
Algorithm X is a recursive, nondeterministic, depth-first, backtracking algorithm that finds all solutions to the exact cover problem. Some of the better-known exact cover problems include tiling, the n queens problem, and Sudoku. The name dancing links, which was suggested by Donald Knuth, stems from the way the
The book begins with a "tutorial" introducing classical algorithm design techniques including backtracking, divide-and-conquer algorithms, and dynamic programming, methods for the analysis of algorithms, and their application in example puzzles.
The algorithm searches each potential move for the number of conflicts (number of attacking queens), shown in each square. The algorithm moves the queen to the square with the minimum number of conflicts, breaking ties randomly. Note that the number of conflicts is generated by each new direction that a queen can attack from. If two queens ...
One way to speed up a brute-force algorithm is to reduce the search space, that is, the set of candidate solutions, by using heuristics specific to the problem class. For example, in the eight queens problem the challenge is to place eight queens on a standard chessboard so that no queen attacks any other.
Algorithm X with Knuth's suggested heuristic for selecting columns solves this problem as follows: Level 0. Step 1—The matrix is not empty, so the algorithm proceeds. Step 2—The lowest number of 1s in any column is two. Column 1 is the first column with two 1s and thus is selected (deterministically):
Some hobbyists have developed computer programs that will solve Sudoku puzzles using a backtracking algorithm, which is a type of brute force search. [3] Backtracking is a depth-first search (in contrast to a breadth-first search), because it will completely explore one branch to a possible solution before moving to another branch.