Puzzle pattern

Anything to do with minesweeper...
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aradesh
Posts: 87
Joined: Sat Aug 29, 2009 3:37 pm

Puzzle pattern

Post by aradesh »

I like this style of pattern, it seems to crop up in the minesweeper puzzles at Janko a lot. (notation: X = safe square, o = flagged mine)
pattern.png
pattern.png (2.53 KiB) Viewed 1999 times
We are able to deduce that both a and b must be either both mines or both safe, and that both safe is a contradiction.

It always takes me a while to spot these patterns in the puzzles as they seem unorthodox to me. Are there similar patterns that can/tend to occur in normal games? Anyone know any simple "formula" for generating these kinds of patterns or spotting them quickly?
qqwref
Posts: 125
Joined: Thu Sep 23, 2010 4:17 pm

Re: Puzzle pattern

Post by qqwref »

You could see it as two intersecting "50-50 sets" (i.e. sets of two squares containing exactly one mine). If A or B is a mine, and B or C is a mine, then A and C are either both mines or both not mines. In this case you're lucky that A and C are connected to the same clue - they wouldn't normally be.

I'm thinking of making a little javascript player/editor where you could save and load puzzles in some text form (e.g. 5x3_B2C4A4A5B3A). Not sure if I want to use images or text - images would be more "stable" and easier to make, but then again, it would also require images. It wouldn't be difficult to be able to handle both Minesweeper and Mosaik type puzzles.
NF player. Best scores 1-10-39.
aradesh
Posts: 87
Joined: Sat Aug 29, 2009 3:37 pm

Re: Puzzle pattern

Post by aradesh »

Yeah, that was the logic I was using to determine they were both the same.

Here is anothernice one. Somehow this looks more plausible to crop-up in a real game.
pattern2.png
pattern2.png (3.12 KiB) Viewed 1957 times
There is exactly one mine in A,C and there is exactly one mine in B,C. Thus A=B, and the 3 tells us that they can't both be mines.
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