meteor-contest description
(Not included in summary comparisons)
Background
The Meteor Puzzle board is made up of 10 rows of 5 hexagonal Cells. There are 10 puzzle pieces to be placed on the board, we'll number them 0 to 9. Each puzzle piece is made up of 5 hexagonal Cells. As different algorithms may be used to generate the puzzle solutions, we require that the solutions be printed in a standard order and format. Here's one approach - working along each row left to right, and down the board from top to bottom, take the number of the piece placed in each cell on the board, and create a string from all 50 numbers, for example the smallest puzzle solution would be represented by
00001222012661126155865558633348893448934747977799
Print the smallest and largest Meteor Puzzle 50 character solution string in this format to mimic the hexagonal puzzle board:
0 0 0 0 1 2 2 2 0 1 2 6 6 1 1 2 6 1 5 5 8 6 5 5 5 8 6 3 3 3 4 8 8 9 3 4 4 8 9 3 4 7 4 7 9 7 7 7 9 9
The command line parameter N should limit how many solutions will be found before the program halts, so that you can work with just a few solutions to debug and optimize your program.
The puzzle board
cell NW NE W E SW SE 0 -- -- -- 01 -- 05 1 -- -- 00 02 05 06 2 -- -- 01 03 06 07 3 -- -- 02 04 07 08 4 -- -- 03 -- 08 09 5 00 01 -- 06 10 11 6 01 02 05 07 11 12 7 02 03 06 08 12 13 8 03 04 07 09 13 14 9 04 -- 08 -- 14 -- 10 -- 05 -- 11 -- 15 11 05 06 10 12 15 16 12 06 07 11 13 16 17 13 07 08 12 14 17 18 14 08 09 13 -- 18 19 15 10 11 -- 16 20 21 16 11 12 15 17 21 22 17 12 13 16 18 22 23 18 13 14 17 19 23 24 19 14 -- 18 -- 24 -- 20 -- 15 -- 21 -- 25 21 15 16 20 22 25 26 22 16 17 21 23 26 27 23 17 18 22 24 27 28 24 18 19 23 -- 28 29 25 20 21 -- 26 30 31 26 21 22 25 27 31 32 27 22 23 26 28 32 33 28 23 24 27 29 33 34 29 24 -- 28 -- 34 -- 30 -- 25 -- 31 -- 35 31 25 26 30 32 35 36 32 26 27 31 33 36 37 33 27 28 32 34 37 38 34 28 29 33 -- 38 39 35 30 31 -- 36 40 41 36 31 32 35 37 41 42 37 32 33 36 38 42 43 38 33 34 37 39 43 44 39 34 -- 38 -- 44 -- 40 -- 35 -- 41 -- 45 41 35 36 40 42 45 46 42 36 37 41 43 46 47 43 37 38 42 44 47 48 44 38 39 43 -- 48 49 45 40 41 -- 46 -- -- 46 41 42 45 47 -- -- 47 42 43 46 48 -- -- 48 43 44 47 49 -- -- 49 44 -- 48 -- -- --
How to implement
The Meteor Puzzle and 3 Java puzzle solvers are described in [pdf 111KB] "Optimize your Java application's performance".
You are expected to diff the output from your program N = 2098 against this output file to check your program output has the correct format, before you contribute your program.