Re:Maze Design (2005)
by ajkjk on Tuesday January 29, 2019 @03:20PM
(#19029482)
Seems like the connected-vortices mazes are easy to solve if you start by just figuring out the maze of vortex-connections first (which is very small), and then just checking each individual vortex. (Sometimes a vortex will have several paths which aren't actually connected internally, but that should come out in the second step.)
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| on HN ]
I think one would have to attack it the other way: focus on each vortex first, classify its connectivity. Since I think any path from East to West would break a path from North to South and vice versa, you'd have to classify each vortex by what it connects, down to one of:
{., NE, NW, ES, SW, NS, EW, NE/SW, NW/SE, NES, NEW, NSW, ESW, NESW}
In a more visual language you'd have 5x5 tiles which the bigger picture is made out of: \ / \ / \ / \ / \ /
\ / \ / \ / | | ‾‾
X X X X | |
/ \ / \ / \ / | | __
/ \ / \ / \ / / \ / \
\ / \ / \ /
\ / \ / \ /
\ / X X X X .
\ / / \ / \
\ / / \ / \
Once you've figured out each individual vortex I think solving the bigger problem is probably doable?