Questions tagged [grid]
For challenges involving a grid.
277
questions
14
votes
6answers
504 views
Maximal saturated domino covering of a rectangle
Inspired by this OEIS entry.
Background
A saturated domino covering is a placement of dominoes over an area such that
the dominoes are completely inside the area,
the dominoes entirely cover the ...
19
votes
2answers
1k views
Wait, which tetromino was that?
Background
Tetris is a single-player game played on a rectangular grid with tetromino pieces.
When you fill one or more lines with tetrominoes, the filled lines are removed, and all blocks above them ...
38
votes
9answers
1k views
Recognise a Digit from a Positional Encoding
Starting an the origin on an infinite grid, you follow a predetermined path going up (U), down (D), left (...
33
votes
8answers
2k views
Connect the Three Kingdoms
You are a medieval overlord tasked with designing a road network between three kingdoms placed on a \$9 \times 9\$ grid. A sample placement of kingdoms might look like this:
Non-commercial use of ...
17
votes
6answers
379 views
Secret “>” Stacking Challenge: grading
Background
Tetris Grand Master 3 has a hidden grading system based on the shape of the stack at the end of the game, which is called Secret ">" Stacking Challenge. It consists of entirely ...
14
votes
7answers
1k views
Can I exit the maze with this many bombs?
Inspired by this Puzzling challenge, and easier version of my previous challenge.
Challenge
A 2D rectangular grid is given, where each cell is either an empty space or a wall. You start at the top ...
10
votes
2answers
204 views
Minimal cost path in wall-breaking maze
Inspired by this Puzzling challenge.
Challenge
Given a 2D rectangular grid where each cell is either an empty space or a wall, find the path (or one of the paths) from the top left cell to the bottom ...
7
votes
3answers
203 views
Domino Recurrence Generator
Challenge
We once had a challenge to count domino tilings of m by n grid, and we all know that, for any fixed number of rows, the number of domino tilings by columns forms a linear recurrence. Then ...
7
votes
0answers
211 views
Shift Tac Toe - Code Golf Challenge
Shift Tac Toe
Shift Tac Toe is a game that combines Tic Tac Toe and Connect 4 together. In this game, you start with a 3 by 3 board, and each row is connected to a slider that you can move left and ...
17
votes
5answers
1k views
Where will the gem-picking robot end up?
Related puzzle: Pathfinder (available on Puzzle Picnic)
Background
A robot is standing on a cell of a rectangular grid, where each cell has one or more gems except for the one with the robot. The ...
1
vote
1answer
265 views
Crazy Blazin' DOM Injection
Introduction
This problem is a challenge that has to do with DOM manipulation at scale and overcoming some issues that may be inherent in dealing with the DOM.
This challenge is interesting because ...
8
votes
0answers
128 views
Cover positions with snakes of same 'colour'
Imagine a grid where the origin square \$(0,0)\$ is at the top left of the screen, and positive \$x\$ is rightwards whereas positive \$y\$ is downwards. Coloured squares are at various positions on ...
9
votes
11answers
761 views
Counting King's Hamiltonian Paths through 3-by-N grid
Background
A Hamiltonian path is a path on a graph that steps through its vertices exactly once. On a grid, this means stepping through every cell exactly once.
On a square grid, a Chess King can move ...
11
votes
5answers
462 views
Verify Tents and Trees solution
Background
Tents and Trees (try here) is a puzzle played on a square (or rectangular) grid, where the objective is to place tents horizontally or vertically adjacent to each of the trees, so that no ...
22
votes
3answers
1k views
Baba is golf, flag is win
If you haven't played the game Baba is You, I think you really should. Whether you’ve played it or not, have a go at implementing it as a code golf.
The idea behind this challenge is to have a bit ...
18
votes
2answers
1k views
Is this a valid Shakashaka solution?
Background
Shakashaka is a puzzle on a grid, whose objective is to place some half-squares (right triangles) on the empty cells so that all the remaining contiguous regions form rectangles, either ...
13
votes
3answers
537 views
Can this polyomino tile the toroidal grid?
Inspired by certain puzzles on Flow Free: Warps.
Background
We all know that L-triominos can't tile the 3x3 board, and P-pentominos can't tile the 5x5 board. But the situation changes if we allow the ...
15
votes
4answers
303 views
Validate Blokus Board
Blokus is a board game in which players take turns placing pieces on a \$ n \times n \$ square grid. In this version of the game, there will be just one person playing. The person is given \$ 21 \$ ...
2
votes
3answers
421 views
Magic Square, Magic Code
A magic square is an \$ n \times n \$ square grid, such that the sum of the integers on each row and column are equal. Note that the definition which will be used in this challenge is different than ...
21
votes
6answers
565 views
Find the longest snake on a grid
Background
A snake is a path over the cells of a square grid, such that it doesn't touch itself on a side of a unit square. Touching at a corner is allowed.
An example snake:
...
24
votes
6answers
867 views
Analyze the flow
On a toroidal square grid (you can wrap around) where each cell indicates one direction (^ > ...
9
votes
5answers
442 views
Is this a cube?
This challenge is a riff on Dion's challenge "Is this a rectangle?". The goal of this challenge is to write a program to decide whether or not some collection of tuples of integers represents a ...
32
votes
16answers
3k views
8
votes
3answers
373 views
Triangles in a tetrahedron
The goal of this challenge is to extend the OEIS sequence A334581.
Number of ways to choose \$3\$ points that form an equilateral triangle from the \$\binom{n+2}{3}\$ points in a regular tetrahedral ...
10
votes
4answers
328 views
Holey Knight's Tour
Given a rectangular board of cells with some number of holes in it, determine whether it is possible to complete a "holey knight's tour" (That is, a path that visits every non-hole cell exactly once ...
14
votes
4answers
344 views
Escape the Candlelit Maze
You find yourself in a strange place. A frighteningly dark maze, lit only by dim candles resting in the occasional hallway. Numerous paths lie only in impassable darkness, foreboding and-- ...Hm? What?...
10
votes
6answers
391 views
Reachability measure in Conway's Soldiers
Background
Conway's Soldiers is a version of peg solitaire played on an infinite checkerboard. The board is initially full of pegs below an infinite horizontal line, and empty above it. Following the ...
7
votes
1answer
338 views
Infinite Snake game
Infinite Snake is just like the video game Snake, except for that the snake is infinitely long, there are no items to eat, and the Snake needs to move in a repeating ...
19
votes
2answers
326 views
Exactly N in a line
Given a number N from 2 to 8, place any nonzero number of queens on a grid of any size so that every queen has exactly N queens (counting itself) in each of its row, column, and each diagonal.
This ...
21
votes
7answers
1k views
No-Three-In-A-Line
Note: this problem was inspired by the Unsolved Mathematical Problems for K-12 youtube video, which also features other interesting puzzles.
From the wikipedia article:
The no-three-in-line ...
13
votes
6answers
903 views
Counting Queen's paths on a rectangular chessboard
Task
Given two positive integers \$m,n\$, imagine a chessboard of size \$m \times n\$. A chess queen is on the upper-left corner. In how many ways can it reach the lower-right corner, by moving only ...
8
votes
7answers
523 views
Produce an image based on an elementary cellular automata ruleset
What is elementary cellular automata?
Since I'm not sure I'll be able to explain this so that somebody who has never heard of this is able to understand, I'm giving an explanation from https://...
24
votes
9answers
839 views
Maintain diagonal symmetry when placing N items on a square grid
Write a program that takes in two non-negative integers S and N in that order. S represents the side length of a square grid of . characters. N represents the ...
25
votes
20answers
2k views
How many balloons do I need in each corner?
You have a square board with a bunch of items laid out on it in one of a \$3 \times 3\$ grid of cells and you want to lift it up using balloons, but you can only attach balloons to the corners of the ...
21
votes
13answers
1k views
Walk home one step at a time
You're at integer coordinates \$(x,y)\$ facing one of North, South, East, or West. Your goal is to walk home to \$(0,0)\$. At each step, you may do one of:
Walk one step in the current facing ...
8
votes
0answers
309 views
Morpion solitaire
Morpion solitaire
This is a game that I remember having learnt from my grandparents in my childhood. Initially I didn't know the name. G B has found it to be Join Five (or less ambiguously - Morpion ...
15
votes
3answers
277 views
Is this board Latin-style?
Inspired by Flow Fit: Sudoku, a brand-new mobile puzzle game (as of Nov 2019).
Background
A Latin square is a square grid of side length \$ n \$ filled with \$ n \$ different symbols, where each row ...
3
votes
1answer
374 views
16
votes
1answer
383 views
Counting symmetric grid chains
Notation and definitions
Let \$[n] = \{1, 2, ..., n\}\$ denote the set of the first \$n\$ positive integers.
A polygonal chain is a collection of connected line segments.
The corner set of a ...
25
votes
4answers
825 views
Can Jimmy escape the ghosts?
It is Halloween and Jimmy (/o\) has gone into a mysterious neighborhood for trick-or-treating (ask himself why). Now some evil ghosts are chasing him. Can Jimmy ...
16
votes
5answers
430 views
Is it a Hamiltonian cycle on a grid?
A Hamiltonian path in a graph is a path that visits each vertex exactly once; a Hamiltonian cycle is a Hamiltonian path that is a cycle – the path forms a simple closed loop. In this challenge the ...
17
votes
2answers
656 views
Number of distinct tilings of an n X n square with free n-polyominoes
The newest "nice" OEIS sequence, A328020, was just published a few minutes ago.
Number of distinct tilings of an n X n square with free n-polyominoes.
This sequence counts tilings up to ...
8
votes
3answers
357 views
Identical grids
You’re given two \$r×c\$ grids. Each cell contains either 0 or 1. What are the minimum number of swaps (between horizontally and vertically adjacent cell elements, no wrapping i.e no swapping between ...
20
votes
1answer
336 views
Complete the grid-filling meander
A grid-filling meander is a closed path that visits every cell of a square \$N \times N\$ grid at least once, never crossing any edge between adjacent cells more than once and never crossing itself. ...
21
votes
8answers
974 views
Alice's First Code Review
Alice is an intern in a company that uses Brainfuck as a primary language for both client-side and server-side development. Alice just has written her first code and she's a bit nervous as she's ...
6
votes
2answers
427 views
Can the cursor reach the bottom?
In a matrix of characters, a cursor is a movable position between two adjacent characters, before the first character or after the last character in a line, like that "I"-shaped indicator ...
9
votes
2answers
207 views
Reroute the Path
Given a grid of directions and a start and end position, determine the minimum number of substitutions in the direction grid that needs to be made to complete the path between the two points. The grid ...
9
votes
1answer
292 views
Partition and Restructure
Given two contiguous shapes of the same area, determine the optimal way to divide the first shape into a minimum number of contiguous segments such that they can be rearranged to form the second shape....
16
votes
13answers
893 views
Determine if a grid contains another grid
Challenge
Create a function takes in two 2-dimensional arrays of characters (or strings if the programming language does not have characters as a datatype) as inputs: a and b. If your language does ...
5
votes
1answer
164 views
Words Everywhere
Given a list of words, output a square grid of characters, so that all the words can be read from the grid, by moving horizontally, vertically, or diagonally between characters, without reusing ...
