A Hitori puzzle solver written in Erlang (c) 2012 Jesse Gumm Release under the MIT License
Just for fun
This is not the fastest algorithm in the world, but it's at least slightly smarter than brute force.
It's basic run-time is O(N!) where N represents the number of "offending squares" (squares which are potentially necessary to make black to solve). Speeding up the algorithm depends largely on determining a better mechanism to find a proper "mark black", such as marking squares that must be black. The current method of finding which squares to try first is basically any squares that are potentially black and are found in both a row and a column. Beyond that, no intelligence is used to speed up the process.
Load the source:
> c(hitori).You can load your own puzzles by entering them as a 2-dimensional list. For example, to load a 5x5 puzzle:
> B = hitori:from_list([
[1,2,3,4,5],
[2,3,4,5,1],
[3,4,5,1,2],
[4,5,1,2,3],
[5,4,3,2,1]
]).Then solve the puzzle with hitori:solve/1:
> hitori:solve(B),
[{orig,[[1,2,3,4,5],
[2,3,4,5,1],
[3,4,5,1,2],
[4,5,1,2,3],
[5,4,3,2,1]]},
{solved,[[1,2,x,4,5],
[2,3,4,5,1],
[3,4,5,1,2],
[4,5,1,x,3],
[5,x,3,2,x]]}]It Returns the original unsolved puzzle and the solved puzzle with blacked out squares replaced with the atom x