Abstract
Fully probing plays an important role in the nonogram solving algorithm developed by Wu et al., whose implementation, named LalaFrogKK, has won several nonogram tournaments since 2011. Different fully probing methods affect the overall nonogram solving performance greatly as shown in previous studies. In this paper, we explore fully probing efficiency from different aspects and evaluate its impact on the performance of solving an entire nonogram puzzle. In the exploration, we found several critical factors influencing fully probing efficiency greatly, i.e. re-probing policy, probing sequence, and computational overhead. Taking these critical factors in account, we developed several new fully probing mechanisms to improve nonogram solving performance. Experimental results based on the puzzles of previous nonogram tournaments show that our new fully probing methods have the potential to improve the speed of solving nonogram puzzles significantly.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Batenburg, K.J.: A network flow algorithm for reconstructing binary images from dis- crete X-rays. J. Math. Imag. Vis. 27(2), 175–191 (2007)
Batenburg, K.J., Henstra, S., Kosters, W.A., Palenstijn, W.J.: Constructing simple nonograms of varying difficulty. Pure Math. Appl. 20, 1–15 (2009)
Batenburg, K.J., Kosters, W.A.: Solving nonograms by combining relaxations. Pattern Recogn. 42(8), 1672–1683 (2009)
Bosch, R.A.: Painting by numbers. Optima 65, 16–17 (2001)
Chen, L.P., Huang, K.C.: Solving nonogram puzzles by using group-based fully probing. Comput. Games Assoc. J. 40(4), 387–396 (2018)
Chen, L.P., Hung, C.Y., Liu, Y.C.: A new simplified line solver for nonogram puzzle games. In: TCGA Computer Game Workshop (TCGA2017) (2017)
Chen, Y.C., Lin, S.S.: A fast nonogram solver that won the TAAI 2017 and ICGA 2018 tournaments. Comput. Games Assoc. J. 1–13 (2019, pre-press)
Faase, F.: Nonogram to exact cover, 31 March 2018 (2009). http://www.iwriteiam.nl/D0906.html#28
Huang, K.C., Yeh, J.J., Huang, W.C., Guo, Y.R.: Exploring effects of fully probing sequence on solving nonogram puzzles. Comput. Games Assoc. J. 40(4), 397–405 (2018)
Jing, M.Q.: Solving Japanese puzzles with logical rules and depth first search algorithm. In: International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, pp. 2962–2967 (2009)
Knuth, D.E.: Dancing links. In: Millennial Perspectives in Computer Science: the Oxford-Microsoft Symposium in Honour of Sir Tony Hoare (Cornerstones of Computing), Basingstoke, U.K., pp. 187–214. Palgrave (1999)
Lin, H.H., Sun, D.J., Wu, I.C., Yen, S.J.: The 2011 TAAI computer-game tournaments. Comput. Games Assoc. J. 34(1), 51–54 (2011)
LalaFrogKK, 11 May 2019 (2015). http://java.csie.nctu.edu.tw/~icwu/aigames/LalaFrogKK.html
Nonogram: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 11 May 2019 (2017). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonogram
Olšák, M., Olšák, P.: Griddlers solver, 11 May 2019 (2003). http://www.olsak.net/grid.html#English
Simpson, S.: Nonogram solver, 11 May 2019. http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/~simpsons/software/pkg-nonowimp.htmlz.en-GB
Tsai, J.: Solving Japanese nonograms by taguchi-based genetic algorithm. Appl. Intell. 37(3), 405–419 (2012)
Tsai, J., Chou, P.: Solving Japanese puzzles by genetic algorithms. In: International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, pp. 785–788 (2011)
Tsai, J., Chou, P., Fang, J.: Learning intelligent genetic algorithms using Japanese nonograms. IEEE Trans. Educ. 55(2), 164–168 (2012)
Ueda, N., Nagao, T.: NP-completeness results for nonogram via parsimonious reductions. Tech. rep. TR96-0008, Department Computer Science, Tokyo Institute Technology, Tokyo, Japan (1996)
Wiggers, W.A.: A comparison of a genetic algorithm and a depth first search algorithm applied to Japanese nonograms. In: Twenty Student Conference IT, pp. 1–6 (2004)
Wolter, J.: The ‘Pbnsolve’ paint-by-number puzzle solver, 11 May 2019 (2012). http://webpbn.com/pbnsolve.html
Wu, I.C., et al.: An efficient approach to solving nonograms. IEEE Trans. Comput. Intell. AI Game 5(3), 251–264 (2013)
Yu, C.H., Lee, H.L., Chen, L.H.: An efficient algorithm for solving nonograms. Appl. Intell. 35(1), 18–31 (2009)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Guo, YR., Huang, WC., Yeh, JJ., Chang, HY., Chen, LP., Huang, KC. (2020). On Efficiency of Fully Probing Mechanisms in Nonogram Solving Algorithm. In: Cazenave, T., van den Herik, J., Saffidine, A., Wu, IC. (eds) Advances in Computer Games. ACG 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12516. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65883-0_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65883-0_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-65882-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-65883-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)