| Description | Man versus machine. Who will ultimately be victorious? I guess that question won't truly be answered until we stand atop the smoking remains of civilisation sometime towards the end of the 21st century. But before SkyNet really does take over, we can at least perform a little light-hearted experiment, pitting the human intellect (that's you by the way) against the white heat of the 1980s technological revolution (i.e. your trusty 16K ZX spectrum). Can the crafty intuition of the human mind overcome the inexorable solving ability of the CPU's brute force method? I hope so, for the sake of humanity. *Updated 02/04/08* - A HiSoft BASIC compiled version was added to the downloadable zipfile. *Updated 03/04/08* - Gavin sent a newer version of the game, added to the download as "sudoko3.tap". *Updated 07/04/08* - Gavin sent a newer, faster version of the game in both interpreted and complied format, added to the download as SUDOKU7.TAP. Gavin also supplied me with the world famous incredibly difficult Sokoban puzzle "AI Escargot", also available in the file AI-TEST.Z80. This is solved in a mere 16 seconds under JPP on my puny laptop! Note also, the interpreted versions run on a 16K ZX Spectrum. The compiled versions require a 48K ZX Spectrum. Thanks to Albert/DeusX for finding the AI Escargot puzzle, invented by Arto Inkala, and for pointing out that the puzzle is called "AI Escargot", and not "AL Escargot", which seems to be a common misspelling of this puzzle on the Internet! |
| Comments | The first Sudoku puzzle I threw at this one was solved after 906,105 iterations, meaning I had to resurrect the hyperfast JPP emulator from 1992 in order to see the game completed. I calculated that on a real speccy, the puzzle would have been solved in a little over twelve and a half days. Meaning that if you can't beat the computer within that sort of time frame, then you probably do deserve to lose the game! The brute force algorithm is quite mesmerising to watch in a fast emulator as the numbers fly back and forth across the screen, like there is indeed some diabolical intelligence going on behind the scenes, although we know it uses a brute force method. Also, it sparked international interest with avid followers of this entry now meeting annually. (well not quite but a few e-mails flew around after this one was released, I can tell you!) |
