Verification Of Codes And Difficulty Levels

Checking Codes

Verifying codes on the computer

The book of codes was produced by a novel and complex computer program written to find all solutions to all sub-combinations of a superset of puzzle pieces.  It then aggregates the solution count for each piece code and sorts the results according to increasing level of counts.  It is expected that over the next few years,  the results will be checked by both players and programmers.

Players will be able to check the low-count codes by tweeting solutions and comparing other tweets for the same code.  A special case is to try to find a solution for a code that is not in the book.  There should be no solutions for these cases.  An innocuous error has been inserted into the code book for all sets sold.  See if you can figure out what the error is before it is revealed in 2017!

Programmers will be able to check low-count or high-count codes by writing their own program or using an available program such as Scott Kurowski’s.

Late News!

Mark Pump of Texas found errors in the Easy Set I. The codes that begin with a bidirectional piece (K,L,M,N, or O) did not have their program solution counts divided by two to account for the bidirectional symmetry of the piece. Here are his findings… the first number is the error count published in the code book from the first to the third printing. The second number is the corrected number found by Mark. The fourth edition of the code book incorporates these corrections.

  • NRSUVW2 28 14
  • ORSUVW2 28 14
  • KRSUVW2 32 16
  • LRSUVW2 32 16
  • MRSTUW2 60 30
  • KRSTUV2 116 58
  • LRSTUV2 116 58
  • LRTUVW2 120 60
  • KSTUVW2 120 60
  • ORSTUW2 152 76
  • NRSTUW2 152 76
  • NRTUVW2 154 77
  • OSTUVW2 154 77
  • MRTUVW2 156 78
  • MSTUVW2 156 78
  • ORTUVW2 162 81
  • NSTUVW2 162 81
  • LRSTUW2 176 88
  • KRSTUW2 176 88
  • MRSTUV2 184 92
  • KRTUVW2 198 99
  • LSTUVW2 198 99
  • ORSTVW2 530 265
  • NRSTVW2 530 265
  • MRSTVW2 568 284
  • ORSTUV2 898 449
  • NRSTUV2 898 449
  • Mark used his smart phone to code a puzzle solver and also allowed mirroring of solutions to arrive at the same result as the code book. For a peek at the complexities of Mark’s approach, see the next tab where mirroring of the classic Soma solutions are shown.

Game for the Brain!