From: "Kroeger Simon (ext)" <simon.kroeger.ext@...>
Date: 2005-08-24T17:59:32+09:00
Subject: Re: [QUIZ] Sodoku Solver (#43)

 
> Ok, here's my latest.   My big speedup was figuring out that if I make
> a bad guess, I just eliminate that possibility and re-solve.   See the
> startGuessing method..

hmm ... I use cells with only 2 possibilities left for guessing, so if I

guess wrong, at least I know the right guess. (of course only if there 
are cells with 2 possibilities - but that happens often) If I interpret
your guess method right you are doing the same thing. So I do not 
understand where the speedup comes from.

BTW a lot of speed comes from rather minor changes, like changing

a_set -= [a_value]

to

a_set.delete(a_value)

this makes a HUGE difference. This is obvious if you take some time
to think about it, but it would be realy nice to optimize operators
like -= where you have no chance to use the intermediate objects anyway.

And I don't know why

Set.new(another_set)

seems to be faster than

another_set.clone

I didn't take the time to look into the implementations, yet.

Your 'findPairs' looks promissing... I think I will try something
similar...

> It now solves #30 in  0.194s, and #55 in 0.124  

Impressive!

> ( I'm not sure which puzzle you called #1)

The one posted by David Tran, with only 17 numbers given:

+-------+-------+-------+
| _ _ 6 | 9 _ _ | _ 7 _ |
| _ _ _ | _ 1 _ | _ _ 2 |
| 8 _ _ | _ _ _ | _ _ _ |
+-------+-------+-------+
| _ 2 _ | _ _ _ | _ _ 4 |
| _ _ _ | _ _ _ | _ _ 1 |
| _ _ 5 | _ _ 6 | _ _ _ |
+-------+-------+-------+
| _ _ _ | _ _ _ | _ 6 _ |
| _ _ _ | _ _ 2 | _ 5 _ |
| _ 1 _ | _ 4 3 | _ _ _ |
+-------+-------+-------+

cheers

Simon