LGR - TetraVex and the Unsolvable Puzzle
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
arcadesdudeTV
That Eternity II thing is so cool! Back in the day (2004) when I was making TetraVex for my TI-86 after getting hooked on it from playing it in the zipslack Slackware bundle at the time, I had at one point a bug in my code where it would create unsolvable puzzles. I had made it so it would specifically be solvable but must have missed something. It took a while and completely perplexed me why I couldn't solve some of the puzzles in a game I had made (in TI-BASIC. but I found the error eventually and fixed it so all solutions are solvable. It's super easy to make unsolvable TextraVex puzzles (just randomize the tiles) but not so easy to make sure they're solvable for the whole board.
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That Eternity II thing is so cool! Back in the day (2004) when I was making TetraVex for my TI-86 after getting hooked on it from playing it in the zipslack Slackware bundle at the time, I had at one point a bug in my code where it would create unsolvable puzzles. I had made it so it would specifically be solvable but must have missed something. It took a while and completely perplexed me why I couldn't solve some of the puzzles in a game I had made (in TI-BASIC. but I found the error eventually and fixed it so all solutions are solvable. It's super easy to make unsolvable TextraVex puzzles (just randomize the tiles) but not so easy to make sure they're solvable for the whole board.
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PolAirity
Hey LGR, I enjoy your awesome old school reviews and I was wondering if you knew of a game that I used to play. I can't seem to find info on it anywhere. It was a Windows 3. 1 game much like connect four but with spheres or balls, and the board could be adjusted as well as the amount of balls it took to win. They had an animation when you dropped them in. It may have came packaged with my Packard Bell so it might be affiliated with them. So if you or anyone else here knows or remembers please let me know. Thanks!
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Hey LGR, I enjoy your awesome old school reviews and I was wondering if you knew of a game that I used to play. I can't seem to find info on it anywhere. It was a Windows 3. 1 game much like connect four but with spheres or balls, and the board could be adjusted as well as the amount of balls it took to win. They had an animation when you dropped them in. It may have came packaged with my Packard Bell so it might be affiliated with them. So if you or anyone else here knows or remembers please let me know. Thanks!
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Mawaru-Ponidrum
There's still a million dollar prize related to TetraVex: like many, many other games, an efficient solution for TetraVex at very high sizes (bigger than 16x16) would mean P=NP and would thus be a solution to the corresponding Millenium Prize Problem. Of course, most computer scientists and mathematicians believe it is incredibly unlikely that P=NP and that TetraVex and the many, many problems it is equivalent to in the hardest case are impossible to solve efficiently.
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There's still a million dollar prize related to TetraVex: like many, many other games, an efficient solution for TetraVex at very high sizes (bigger than 16x16) would mean P=NP and would thus be a solution to the corresponding Millenium Prize Problem. Of course, most computer scientists and mathematicians believe it is incredibly unlikely that P=NP and that TetraVex and the many, many problems it is equivalent to in the hardest case are impossible to solve efficiently.
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Thanatos420
This kind of reminds me of Triple Triad from Final Fantasy 8. Only, the polar opposite. Instead of matching numbers to fill a grid, you battle with them to take over a 3x3 grid space. The higher number capturing the adjacent card if it's lower. Thus, the player with the most captured cards and grid space, wins. It feels like Square looked at this and went, 'How do we make that a 2 player game? ' and then bam, Triple Triad was born lol.
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This kind of reminds me of Triple Triad from Final Fantasy 8. Only, the polar opposite. Instead of matching numbers to fill a grid, you battle with them to take over a 3x3 grid space. The higher number capturing the adjacent card if it's lower. Thus, the player with the most captured cards and grid space, wins. It feels like Square looked at this and went, 'How do we make that a 2 player game? ' and then bam, Triple Triad was born lol.
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Mirta
the solution into making a program that solves this is simple, however it's probably the sheer amount of different combinations that the computer has to try stops it from happening.
If it wasn't for the sheer amount of pieces and the fact that they're rotateable, I would say assign a different number to each two-colour/shape combination on the edge. Sure your numbers might go into 1000s, but computer can do number matching.
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the solution into making a program that solves this is simple, however it's probably the sheer amount of different combinations that the computer has to try stops it from happening.
If it wasn't for the sheer amount of pieces and the fact that they're rotateable, I would say assign a different number to each two-colour/shape combination on the edge. Sure your numbers might go into 1000s, but computer can do number matching.
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asshole9191
in my algorithm class we had to proof that a game with the same tiles as tetravex and almost the same rules was PSPACE complete. the difference was that the first row and the last row was given, and the number of rows inbetween and the problem was, is it possible to get to the last row in the given amount of moves.
i did the proof via reducing to finite first order logic. but i don't remember how to proof it -. -
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in my algorithm class we had to proof that a game with the same tiles as tetravex and almost the same rules was PSPACE complete. the difference was that the first row and the last row was given, and the number of rows inbetween and the problem was, is it possible to get to the last row in the given amount of moves.
i did the proof via reducing to finite first order logic. but i don't remember how to proof it -. -
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Sean
Wow, really interesting! I was reading up on the first Eternity puzzle and it turned out that half of the million pounds prize was out of Christopher Monckton's pocket, but the other half was from insurance underwriters who were sure it wouldn't be solved! Monckton is a pretty strange character too, he's an aristocrat, a member of UKIP and a climate change denier!
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Wow, really interesting! I was reading up on the first Eternity puzzle and it turned out that half of the million pounds prize was out of Christopher Monckton's pocket, but the other half was from insurance underwriters who were sure it wouldn't be solved! Monckton is a pretty strange character too, he's an aristocrat, a member of UKIP and a climate change denier!
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John
That board game version would make a good plot for a psychological horror movie; like everyone that tries it goes insane, or it's some kind of Hellraiser-ish puzzle that opens a portal to Hell; the further you get to finishing it, the more things around the world start getting crazy until it's completely done and the portal is fully opened.
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That board game version would make a good plot for a psychological horror movie; like everyone that tries it goes insane, or it's some kind of Hellraiser-ish puzzle that opens a portal to Hell; the further you get to finishing it, the more things around the world start getting crazy until it's completely done and the portal is fully opened.
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MagikGimp
He must have the solutions in a safe somewhere.
Also, I'd never heard of that old Microsoft logo before. I should expect it would have elicited the same feelings of mystery when skilful players saw it on completing the hardest level of puzzles. A secret code symbol? To win a meelion dollarz!
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He must have the solutions in a safe somewhere.
Also, I'd never heard of that old Microsoft logo before. I should expect it would have elicited the same feelings of mystery when skilful players saw it on completing the hardest level of puzzles. A secret code symbol? To win a meelion dollarz!
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Trusteft
The video is excellent, thank you for sharing.
But it is also very depressing. If it takes billions of years for our most powerful computer to solve this, we need to developer better computers. We live in a computing stone age damn it!
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The video is excellent, thank you for sharing.
But it is also very depressing. If it takes billions of years for our most powerful computer to solve this, we need to developer better computers. We live in a computing stone age damn it!
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