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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 ...
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 algorithm works, as iterations of the algorithm cause the links to "dance" with partner links so as to resemble an "exquisitely choreographed dance."
Nauck also extended the puzzle to the n queens problem, with n queens on a chessboard of n×n squares. Since then, many mathematicians, including Carl Friedrich Gauss, have worked on both the eight queens puzzle and its generalized n-queens version. In 1874, S. Günther proposed a method using determinants to find solutions. [1]
Algorithm X is an algorithm for solving the exact cover problem. It is a straightforward recursive, nondeterministic, depth-first, backtracking algorithm used by Donald Knuth to demonstrate an efficient implementation called DLX, which uses the dancing links technique. [1] [2]
Min-Conflicts solves the N-Queens Problem by selecting a column from the chess board for queen reassignment. 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.
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.
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.
Such problems are usually solved via search, in particular a form of backtracking or local search. Constraint propagation is another family of methods used on such problems; most of them are incomplete in general, that is, they may solve the problem or prove it unsatisfiable, but not always. Constraint propagation methods are also used in ...