Let's play Peg Solitaire

Question

Peg solitaire is a popular game usually played alone. The game consists of some number of pegs and a board which is divided into a grid - usually the board is not rectangular but for this challenge we will assume so.

Each valid move allows one to remove a single peg and the goal is to play in a way, such that there is a single peg left. Now, a valid move has to be in a single direction (north, east, south or east) and jump over one peg which can be removed.

Examples

Let . be empty spaces on the board and numbers are pegs, the following move will move 1 one to the right and remove 2 from the board:

.....     .....
.12..  -> ...1.
.....     .....

A move will always have to jump over a single peg, so the following is not valid:

......    ......
.123.. -> ....1.
......    ......

Here are some valid configurations after one move each:

...1...        ...1...        ..71...        ..71...
.2.34.5  --->  .24...5  --->  .2....5  --->  ......5
.678...  (4W)  .678...  (7N)  .6.8...  (2S)  ...8...
.......        .......        .......        .2.....

Challenge

Given an initial board configuration and some other configuration, output whether the other configuration can be reached by successively moving pegs around as described above.

Rules

• Input will be a \$n \times m\$ matrix/list of lists/... of values indicating an empty space (eg. zero or false) or pegs (eg. non-zero or true)
  • you may assume \$n \geq 3\$ and \$m \geq 3\$
  • you may use true/non-zero to indicate empty spaces and vice-versa if it helps
• Output will be two distinct (one of the values might differ) values indicating whether the end-configuration can be reached (eg. falsy/truthy, []/[list of moves] ..)

Test cases

initial  goal -> output
[[1,0,0],[1,1,0],[0,1,0]]  [[0,0,0],[0,1,0],[1,1,0]] -> True
[[1,0,0],[1,1,0],[0,1,0]]  [[0,0,1],[0,1,1],[0,0,0]] -> False
[[0,0,0],[1,0,0],[0,0,0]]  [[0,0,0],[0,0,1],[0,0,0]] -> False
[[0,0,0],[1,1,0],[0,0,0]]  [[0,0,0],[0,1,1],[0,0,0]] -> False
[[0,0,0,0],[1,1,1,0],[0,0,0,0]]  [[0,0,0,0],[0,0,0,1],[0,0,0,0]] -> False
[[1,0,0],[1,1,0],[1,1,1],[1,1,1]]  [[0,0,1],[0,1,0],[1,0,0],[0,0,1]] -> True
[[1,0,0],[1,1,0],[1,1,1],[1,1,1]]  [[1,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0]] -> False
[[1,0,1,1],[1,1,0,0],[1,1,1,0],[1,0,1,0]]  [[0,0,1,0],[1,0,0,0],[1,0,1,0],[1,0,0,1]] -> True
[[1,0,1,1],[1,1,0,0],[1,1,1,0],[1,0,1,0]]  [[0,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0],[0,0,1,0],[0,0,0,0]] -> False
[[1,0,0,0],[1,1,0,0],[1,1,1,0],[1,0,1,0]]  [[0,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0],[0,0,1,0],[0,0,0,0]] -> True
[[0,0,0,0],[0,1,0,0],[0,0,1,0],[0,0,0,0]]  [[0,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0],[0,0,0,1]] -> False
[[0,0,0,0],[0,1,0,0],[0,0,1,0],[0,0,0,0]]  [[1,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0]] -> False
[[0,0,0,1,0,0,0],[0,1,0,1,1,0,1],[0,1,1,1,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0,0,0,0]]  [[0,0,0,1,0,0,0],[0,1,0,1,1,0,1],[0,1,1,1,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0,0,0,0]] -> True
[[0,0,0,1,0,0,0],[0,1,0,1,1,0,1],[0,1,1,1,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0,0,0,0]]  [[0,0,0,1,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0,0,0,0]] -> True
[[0,0,1,1,1,0,0],[0,0,1,1,1,0,0],[1,1,1,1,1,1,1],[1,1,1,0,1,1,1],[1,1,1,1,1,1,1],[0,0,1,1,1,0,0],[0,0,1,1,1,0,0]]  [[0,0,1,1,1,0,0],[0,0,1,1,1,0,0],[1,1,1,1,1,1,1],[1,1,1,1,0,0,1],[1,1,1,1,1,1,1],[0,0,1,1,1,0,0],[0,0,1,1,1,0,0]] -> True
[[0,0,1,1,1,0,0],[0,0,1,1,1,0,0],[1,1,1,1,1,1,1],[1,1,1,0,1,1,1],[1,1,1,1,1,1,1],[0,0,1,1,1,0,0],[0,0,1,1,1,0,0]]  [[0,0,0,0,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0,0,0,0],[0,0,0,1,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0,0,0,0],[0,0,0,0,0,0,0]] -> True

Answer 1

JavaScript (ES6),  184 178  173 bytes

Takes input as (initial_board)(target_board). Returns \$0\$ or \$1\$.

a=>g=b=>a+''==b|a.some((r,y)=>r.some((v,x,A,X,R)=>[-1,0,1,2].some(h=>(A=a[y+(R=~-h%2)]||0)[X=x+(h%=2)]&v>(R=a[y+R*2]||0)[h+=x+h]&&g(b,A[X]=r[x]=R[h]++)&(A[X]=r[x]=R[h]--))))

Try it online!

(removed the last two test cases that take too much time for TIO)

Commented

a =>                             // main function taking the initial board a[]
  g = b =>                       // g = recursive function taking the target board b[]
    a + '' == b |                // yield a truthy result if a[] is matching b[]
    a.some((r, y) =>             // for each row r[] at position y in a[]:
      r.some((v, x, A, X, R) =>  //   for each value v at position x in r[]:
        [-1, 0, 1, 2]            //     list of directions (West, North, East, South)
        .some(h =>               //     for each direction h:
          ( A =                  //       A = a[y + dy]
            a[y + (R = ~-h % 2)] //       R = dy
            || 0                 //       use a dummy row if we're out of the board
          )[X = x + (h %= 2)]    //       h = dx, X = x + dx
          &                      //       yield 1 if there's a peg on the skipped cell
          ( R =                  //       R = target row
            a[y + R * 2]         //         = a[y + 2 * dy]
            || 0                 //       use a dummy row if we're out of the board
          )[h += x + h]          //       h = x + 2 * dx = target column
          < v                    //       yield 1 if there's no peg on the target cell
          &&                     //       and there's a peg on the source cell (0 < 1)
          g(                     //       if the above result is true, do a recursive call:
            b,                   //         pass b[] unchanged
            A[X] = r[x] =        //         clear the source and skipped cells
            R[h]++               //         set the target cell
          ) & (                  //       and then restore the board to its initial state:
            A[X] = r[x] =        //         set the source and skipped cells
            R[h]--               //         clear the target cell
          )                      //
        )                        //     end of some() over directions
      )                          //   end of some() over columns
    )                            // end of some() over rows

Answer 2

Clean, 232 bytes

import StdEnv,Data.List
r=reverse
@[a:t=:[b,c:u]]=[[a:v]\\v<- @t]++take(a*b-c)[[0,0,1:u]];@l=[]

flip elem o\c=limit(iterate(nub o concatMap\l=[l]++[f(updateAt i p(f l))\\f<-[id,transpose],q<-f l&i<-[0..],p<- @q++(map r o@o r)q])[c])

Try it online!

This is one of the rare occasions in which I can utilize composition and currying while saving bytes.

Explained:

@ :: [Int] -> [[Int]] is a helper function used to generate the different potential new rows/columns that could result from a move being made. It avoids needing to special-case [1,1,0:_] by noticing that a*b-c>0 only when [a,b,c]=[1,1,0], and so take(a*b-c)... gives [] by taking -1 or 0 elements for all configurations that aren't a valid move.

flip elem o... reverses the order of arguments to elem (making it "does x contain a y" instead of "is x a member of y") and applies the anonymous function on c to the first argument.

\c=limit(iterate(nub o concatMap ...)[c]) generates every potential board that can result from the c by joining the current set of boards with all the moves that can happen on all of the boards and removing the duplicates, until the result stops changing.

\l=[l]++... prepends the board l to the list of all potential new boards one-move distance away, generated by applying @ to the rows of each orientation of the board (0, 90, 180, 270-degree rotations) and replacing the corresponding changed row with the new row.