Indonesian Journal on Computing (Indo-JC)
Vol. 8 No. 2 (2023): August, 2023

Elementary Search-based Algorithms for Solving Tilepaint Puzzles

Vincentius Arnold Fridolin (School of Computing, Telkom University)
Muhammad Arzaki (Computing Laboratory, School of Computing, Telkom University)
Gia Septiana Wulandari (Computing Laboratory, School of Computing, Telkom University)



Article Info

Publish Date
30 Aug 2023

Abstract

This paper discusses the elementary computational aspects of Tilepaint puzzles, single-player logic puzzles introduced in 1995 and confirmed NP-complete in 2022. Two elementary search-based algorithms are proposed: the complete search technique with a bitmasking approach and the prune-and-search technique with a backtracking approach and pruning optimization. This paper shows that the asymptotic running time of these algorithms for solving an $m \times n$ Tilepaint instance containing $p$ tiles are respectively $O(2^{p} \cdot p \cdot mn)$ and $O(2^{p} \cdot mn)$, implying that the latter method is asymptotically faster by a factor of $p$. This paper also discusses tractable and intractable variants of Tilepaint puzzles. This paper shows that an $m \times n$ Tilepaint instance containing $mn$ tiles of size $1 \times 1$ is solvable in polynomial time. In contrast, this paper shows that solving general $m \times 1$ and $1 \times n$ Tilepaint puzzles remains intractable by reducing such problems from the subset-sum problem.

Copyrights © 2023






Journal Info

Abbrev

indojc

Publisher

Subject

Computer Science & IT

Description

Indonesian Journal on Computing (Indo-JC) is an open access scientific journal intended to bring together researchers and practitioners dealing with the general field of computing. Indo-JC is published by School of Computing, Telkom University ...