Solving Shut The Box

  • What does it mean to solve a probabilistic game?

  • Suppose we had a table that told us the expected value of every possible position

  • Then "perfect" play would mean always choosing the move that minimized EV (STB is upside-down)

  • How many entries does such a table have? 2^9 = 512

  • Build the table using dynamic programming

    • EV of a shut box is 0

    • EV of a box with one digit open is computable from EV of all successor states

    • Same for 2…9 digit boxes

Let's Solve STB!

  • http://github.com/pdx-cs-ai/stb

  • EV of starting position is about 14762

  • Maybe want to maximize shut boxes? Minimize EV(log(s))?

  • Could calculate a fancier table useful for competitive play

Search In Sliding Tile Puzzles

  • See the course notes on Sliding Tile Puzzles

  • http://github.com/pdx-cs-ai/slider

  • Can solve 8-puzzle (3×3) instances reasonably quickly

  • 15-puzzle (4×4) is pretty hopeless

Last modified: Tuesday, 6 October 2020, 9:50 AM