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Re:Brute-forcing a seemingly simple number puzzle by brazzy on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @10:16AM (#18608898)
This, so much.

I remember writing a solver for a different game, and already had a dead end check in it, but with increasing board size it took half an hour to find a solution. Then I added another check for a different dead end condition. This actually required quite a lot of additional work, more than doubling the time spent for evaluating each board state. But it brought down the time from 30 minutes to a fraction of a second!

Re:Brute-forcing a seemingly simple number puzzle by mabbo on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @12:15PM (#18610249)
Spend twice as long to prevent spending exponentially more time- usually worth it.