sudokumaker 0.1-modified

Author:

Ralf Schlatterbeck <rsc@runtux.com>

Sudoku Maker is a generator for Sudoku number puzzles. It uses a genetic algorithm internally, so it can serve as an introduction to genetic algorithms. The generated Sudokus are usually very hard to solve – good for getting rid of a Sudoku addiction (or maybe not).

It also includes a simple depth-first solver for sudoku puzzles – the solver is internally needed when generating sudoku puzzles. The included sudoku.py can be called and reads a sudoku from standard input. It outputs the solution (if any) or if there isn’t a single solution to the given puzzle it will output several (up to a maximum).

The representation of sudoku puzzles is a simple: 9 lines with 9 numbers in each line, e.g.,

300000500
000000260
000308000
000000091
400100000
037000000
800006000
006485700
000009002

The numbers 1-9 represent the given numbers of the puzzle while the zeros represent the empty tiles. A solved puzzle simply contains no zeros.

There are two variants of sudoku puzzles supported. The first variant adds the diagonals (so in each of the two diagonals the numbers 1-9 must be present), this variant can be requested with the --diagonal option. The sudoku maker currently doesn’t support the variants. The second variant requires that in each quadrant there are 9 distinct colors, the same color is always at the same position in each quadrant. The numbers 1-9 must be present on each of the colors.

Sudoku puzzles can be pretty-printed as LaTeX using the included sudoku_as_tex program. This currently supports printing the diagonals in yellow if the --diagonal option is given. Color printing for the second variant of sudoku puzzles is not yet supported.

For the genetic algorithm library, my python wrapper pgapy of the parallel genetic algorithm library (pgapack) is needed. There is currently no Windows support for pgapy as it requires the pgapack library to be installed. For a skilled person it should be possible to get pgapack running on Windows, so if you’re doing this, let me know.

Version 0.1: Initial Release

Sudoku Maker is a generator for Sudoku number puzzles. It uses a genetic algorithm internally.

• First Release after a long silent development