Using single-card moves only:
for 57148 I get a solution at 75 moves, unsolvable at 74.
for 80488 60 moves in 52 seconds after 31 million times through the main loop
and 3.15 million stored positions.
I may have a little time to try the other deals later.
However, my shortest solutions are not yet certain. The only way that I know
of to be sure is to allow all legal moves. But that isn't practical for most
deals as the tables grow very quickly. One may be able to show/prove that the
disallowed moves are not needed, but I don't know how to do that except with
statistics. Here's one possible disallowed move: I remember reading that the
Woods solver won't move a single card from the top of a column to an empty
column. That restriction will make most deals go faster, but it's possible that
there is some odd deal lurking in the shadows that can be solved in fewer moves
without the ban.
Bill Raymond
Received on Tue Sep 30 2003 - 10:17:51 IDT