Algorithmic Puzzles

Anany Levitin
Villanova University
anany.levitin@villanova.edu
Plan of the Talk
What is an algorithmic puzzle?
Two taxonomies of algorithmic puzzles
Algorithmic puzzles in research
Algorithmic problem solving and puzzles in
education
Puzzles in job interviews (?)
Q&A
What is an algorithmic puzzle?
An algorithm is a sequence of unambiguous instructions
for solving a problem.

A puzzle is a problem that challenges ingenuity.

An algorithmic puzzle is a puzzle that involves the design
or analysis of an algorithm.

Birth of the term algorithmic puzzle
oldest algorithmic puzzles are more than 1,200 years old
(Alcuin of Yorks river crossing puzzles c. 800 CE)

just recently recognized as a special category of puzzles
algopuzzles
A. K. Dewdney, Scientific American, June 1987

cyberpuzzles
D. Shasha, Doctor Ecco's Cyberpuzzles, 2002

algorithmic puzzles
P. Winkler, Mathematical Puzzles: a Connoisseurs
Collection, 2004



first large collection of algorithmic puzzles
A. Levitin and M. Levitin
Algorithmic Puzzles, Oxford, 2011
30-page tutorial with 22 puzzles as examples and 150 other
algorithmic puzzles divided into three difficulty levels

Two Taxonomies of Algorithmic Puzzles
Algorithmic puzzles can be classified by

puzzle types

algorithmic questions posed
Some Types of Algorithmic Puzzles
river crossing and similar problems

weighing, measuring, and cutting puzzles

moving counter problems

state changing puzzles (coin turning, pancake frying)

chessboard problems (8 queens, knights tours)
Some Types of Algorithmic Puzzles (cont.)
route and tracing puzzles

tiling problems

magic squares and related problems

sliding piece puzzles

1-person games (Chinese Rings, Tower of Hanoi)
5 Types of Algorithmic Questions
find, for a given input, the output of a given algorithm

find an input yielding a required output by a given algorithm

find the number of steps needed to solve a puzzle by a given
algorithm

design an algorithm for solving a given puzzle (often, in a
minimum number of moves)

show that a puzzle has no solution with operations allowed
by the puzzle
Find an algorithms output
Fibonaccis rabbit problem (1202) A man put a pair of rabbits
in a place surrounded on all sides by a wall. How many pairs of
rabbits can be produced from that pair in a year if it is supposed
that every month each pair begets a new pair which from the
second month on becomes productive?



Find an algorithms input
Josephus Problem There are n people numbered 1 to n
standing in a circle. Starting the count with person number 1,
every second person is eliminated until only one person is left.
Where in the circle should a person stand to remain the last
person standing?

Infected Chessboard A virus spreads through squares of an
nn chessboard infecting squares that have two infected
neighbors (horizontally, vertically, but not diagonally). What
is a smallest subset of unit squares that need to be infected
initially for the virus to spread to the entire board?

Find an algorithms number of steps
Single-elimination tournament
How many matches, in total, does it take to determine a winner
among n players? How many rounds need to be played?
A more interesting question is about the number of byes if n 2
k

Design an algorithm for a puzzle given
Most algorithmic puzzles can be theoretically solved by
exhaustive search (generate and check all potential
solutions) or its more intelligent version called
backtracking but a more efficient solution is usually
expected.

Algorithm design puzzles can be classified by the
solutions design strategy (divide-and-conquer, greedy,
dynamic programming, etc.)
General Algorithm Design Strategies
brute force (w/exhaustive search as special case)
backtracking and branch-and-bound
decrease-and-conquer
divide-and-conquer
transform-and-conquer
greedy approach
iterative improvement
dynamic programming

Divide-and-Conquer Strategy
1. Divide a given problem into two or more smaller
subproblems

2. Solve the smaller subproblems

3. Combine the solutions to the subproblems to get a
solution to the problem given

Divide-and-Conquer Example
Tromino Puzzle Cover any 2
n
2
n
chessboard with one
missing square with right trominoes (L-shaped tiles of 3
adjacent squares)



Invented by Solomon Golomb, then a math graduate student
at Harvard, in the early 1950s
Solution to the Tromino Puzzle
Place one tromino at the center of the board to cover three
central unit squares that are not in the 2
n-1
2
n-1
subboard with
the missing square. This reduces the problem to tiling the four
2
n-1
2
n-1
subboards each with one missing square, which can
be done by the same method (i.e. recursively).
Real-Life Application
Puzzles with no solution
7 Bridges of Knigsberg (Leonhard Euler, 1736)

Find a walk through the city that would cross each bridge once
and only once.
Puzzles with no solution
The Fifteen Puzzle (a precursor was invented by Noyes
Chapman, a postmaster in Canastota, NY; the instance below
was popularized by Sam Loyd, 1870s)

Slide the numbered tiles from the configuration on the left to the
configuration on the right.
Puzzles with no solution
Tiling a mutulated chessboard with dominoes (Martin Gardners
1957 column in Scientific American)

Tile (i.e., cover exactly with no overlaps) an 88 board without two
diagonally opposite corners with dominoes (21 rectangles).
Puzzles in Research
Two historically important algorithmic puzzles:
Fibonaccis Rabbits Problem Fibonacci numbers
7 Bridges of Knigsberg topology, graph theory

Traveling Salesman Problem/Puzzle





Can TSP be solved in polynomial time, i.e. significantly faster
than exhaustive search?
(P NP conjecture, with a $1 million prize from the Clay
Mathematics Institute for an answer)

Find a shortest tour through n cities
that visits every city once before
returning to the tours starting city
Puzzles in Research (cont.)
Optimal solutions to some puzzles






Most research is in puzzle complexity
(e.g., E. Demaine of MIT)
20-move solution for any Rubiks
Cube configuration (2010)
Puzzles in Education Why?
Help developing problem-solving skills and creativity

Attract more interest on the part of students, making them work
harder on the problems assigned to them

May seem less intimidating to less prepared students

Force students to think about algorithms on a more abstract level,
divorced from programming and computer language minutiae

Are excellent subjects for project assignments and independent
research


Puzzles in Education (cont.)
very old idea
Propositiones ad acuendos juvenes (Problems to sharpen
the young) attributed to Alcuin of York, c.800 CE,
contained three river-crossing puzzles
the wolf-goat-cabbage puzzle
three jealous husbands
the two adults and the two children, where
the children weigh half as much as the adults
Puzzles in Education a modern quote
There is no better way to relieve the tedium than by injecting
recreational topics into a course, topics strongly tinged with
elements of play, humor, beauty, and surprise.

Martin Gardner (1914--2010)
an American writer, best known
for his "Mathematical Games"
column in Scientific American
and books on recreational mathematics
(voted one of the ten most influential
mathematicians of XX century, although
he had no formal math training beyond a
high school)
Puzzle-Based Learning (PBL)


Z. Michalewicz and M. Michalewicz
Puzzle-Based Learning
Hybrid Publishers, 2008
general problem solving oriented

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaKuB1lrqtw
PBL
Puzzles in Modern Higher Education
A few schools run puzzle-based courses
Carnegie Mellon
Univ. of Vermont
UNC-Charlotte
Univ. of Colorado-Colorado Springs
UCSB
Virginia Tech
a few foreign schools (Australia, Israel, Japan, Poland)
Villanova fall 2012

Two types of the courses
3-credit course
1-credit (in introductory engineering or problem solving
courses)

Algorithmic Puzzles and Main CS Ideas
Notion of an algorithm (e.g., river crossing puzzles, detecting a
lighter fake coin with a balance, or the following more
sophisticated example)

Catching a Spy In a computer game, a spy is located on a one-
dimensional line. At time 0, the spy is at location a. With each
time interval, the spy moves b units to the right if b 0 and |b|
units to the left if b < 0; a and b are fixed integers, but they are
unknown to you. Your goal is to identify the spy's location by
asking at each time interval (starting at time 0) whether the spy is
currently at some location of your choosing. For example, you
can ask whether the spy is currently at location 19, to which you
will receive a truthful yes/no answer. If the answer is "yes," you
reach your goal; if the answer is "no," you can ask the next time
whether the spy is at the same or another location of your choice.
Devise an algorithm that will find the spy after a finite number of
questions.


Catching a Spy (Algorithmic Puzzles, #136)
How to catch the spy?
0 1 2 3 4 -1 -2 -3 -4
Algorithmic Puzzles and Main CS Ideas
Tower of Hanoi (douard Lucas, 1883)
There are n disks of different sizes and three pegs. Initially, all
the disks are on the first peg in order of size, the largest on the
bottom and the smallest on top. The objective is to transfer all
the disks to another peg by a sequence of moves. Only one
disk can be moved at a time, and it is forbidden to place a
larger disk on top of a smaller one.

Algorithmic Puzzles and Main CS Ideas
All 9 general algorithm design strategies can be nicely
illustrated by algorithmic puzzles, showing applicability
of the strategies to problems outside traditional
computing domain

See:

A. Levitin, Introduction to the Design and Analysis of
Algorithms, 3
rd
ed., 2011

A. Levitin and M. Levitin, Algorithmic Puzzles, 2011

A. Levitin and M.-A. Papalaskari, Proc. of SIGCSE02


Algorithmic Puzzles and Main CS Ideas
Insolvability of some problems and the idea of an
invariant: a property that doesnt change by any of
the operations allowed in the problem
Parity (e.g. 7 Bridges of Knigsberg, the Fifteen Puzzle)

Coloring (e.g. many tiling and chessboard tour problems)
Algorithmic Puzzles and Main CS Ideas
Algorithm efficiency

False Coin Detection Find a lighter fake among n coins
with a balance scale without any weights.

Brute force: weigh coin pairs (1 vs. 1)

Divide-by-half: divide into two halves (with 1 aside if n is odd)
and compare their weights

Divide into 3 about equal subsets is better than dividing into two
Schweiks Puzzle (Algorithmic Puzzles, #50)
Note: The puzzle alludes to the hero of the novel The Good Soldier
Schweik by the Czech writer Yaroslav Haek (1883--1923). In this
satirical novel, Schweik is depicted as a simple minded man who
appears to be eager to execute orders but does it in a manner that,
in fact, contradicts their intended goal.

The good soldier Schweik had been ordered to line up a band of
new recruits. The desired line was required to minimize the
average difference in height of adjacent men. Schweik put the
tallest recruit first, the shortest one last, and let the remaining men
stand between them in random order. Did Schweik execute his
order as stated?

Instance of Schweiks Puzzle
Is the average difference in height of adjacent men minimized in
this line?
What mathematical fact, which is occasionally useful for
algorithm analysis, does the puzzle demonstrate?
Algorithmic Thinking For Other Majors
Increasing importance of algorithmic thinking for all

Computational thinking is a problem solving approach named
for its extensive use of computer science techniques. The term
was first used by Seymour Papert (of the Logo fame) in 1996.

Basic skills: 3Rs (Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic)
+ computational thinking
Jeannette Wing, Head of CS Dept. at CMU, CACM, March 2006

Algorithmic thinking is the main component of computational
thinking

Importance of Algorithmic Thinking (cont.)
Increasing importance of algorithmic methods in sciences from
biology to sociology

The Algorithm's coming-of-age as the new language of science
promises to be the most disruptive scientific development since
quantum mechanics.
Bernard Chazelle
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~chazelle/pubs/algorithm.html

XVII-XX centuries math equations
XXI century CS algorithms

General Problem Solving Strategies
by a famous physicist

by a prominent mathematician

by CS (algorithmics)

General Problem Solving Strategies (cont.)
Richard Feynman (1918-1988),
Nobel Prize winner (1965)

A fellow physicist joked that Feynman
solved problems by what has become
known as

The Feynman Problem-Solving Algorithm:

1. write down the problem
2. think very hard
3. write down the answer
General Problem Solving Strategies (cont.)
George Plya (1887-1985),
prominent Hungarian mathematician, lived in the U.S. since 1940

Author of the most well-known book on problem solving
How to Solve It, published first in 1945 and still in print!

The four-step plan:

1. Understand the problem
2. Devise a plan
3. Carry out the plan
4. Look back

The plan is further elaborated by 67 (!) heuristics




General Problem Solving Strategies (cont.)
Computer Science can offer several general problem
solving strategies:

brute force (w/exhaustive search as special case)
backtracking and branch-and-bound
decrease-and-conquer
divide-and-conquer
transform-and-conquer
greedy approach
iterative improvement
dynamic programming
This is what CS should be selling to the world!
Algorithmic Puzzle-Based Course
for Other Majors
Algorithmic puzzles can help teaching algorithmic
thinking without traditional CS background and
computer programming

CS programming

Major objectives
appreciation of the concept of algorithm including that of
recursive algorithm
familiarity with major algorithm design strategies
some familiarity with importance of algorithm efficiency
recognition of problems that have no algorithmic solution

Algorithmic Puzzles in K12 Education
"Most (U.S.) students are not exposed to computer science in the
same way they are to biology and physics. We have to incorporate
computer science at the K-12 level. It's not easy to do, but this is
what is needed." Jeannette Wing, quoted in The Pittsburgh
Tribune-Review, 2/27/2012

Algorithmic puzzles are particularly attractive for the pre-college
exposure to algorithmic problem solving
Algorithmic Puzzles in K12 Education
Some chapters for a 2007 supplement to the Russian course on
informatics (grades 56)
Patterns
Sorting
1-to-1 correspondence
Problems about liars
River crossing problems
Decanting problems
Weighing problems
Combinatorial problems
Numeral systems
Game strategies
Summary
Algorithmic puzzles is an interesting puzzle genre
still underappreciated
exceptionally promising for growth in importance

Problem solving is increasingly understood as
algorithmic problem solving

Algorithmic puzzles can illustrate main ideas of CS

In particular, they show that algorithm design strategies
are general problem solving tools with applications
outside traditional CS domain


In addition to all the utilitarian benefits of
algorithmic puzzles, the best of them are
remarkable and inspiring products of human
ingenuity and wit.
Puzzles in Technical Interviews
Until recently, puzzles were a standard component of
job interviews at leading software companies and
Wall Street

Influenced (but not originated) by Microsoft
W. Poundstone, How Would You Move Mount Fuji?
Microsofts Cult of the Puzzle: How the Worlds Smartest
Companies Select the Most Creative Thinkers, 2004

Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google? 2012

The practice remains controversial
Arguments against interview puzzles
Solving puzzles is irrelevant to specific skills required for the job in
question

Typical interview puzzles are too difficult for the short time allotted
to an interview

Puzzles can be vague or based on tricks, with some of them not even
having a clear-cut correct answer

There is no convincing documented evidence that persons hired
after successful puzzle-solving prove to be better employees than
candidates turned down after such interviews

After many interview puzzles and their solutions have been
published in books and on the Internet, their value has all but
disappeared because there is no way to verify whether the
interviewee knew the puzzles solution before the interview
Arguments for interview puzzles
Interview puzzles seek to identify good general problem
solvers rather than specific skills such as coding

Interviewers might not necessarily be interested in a puzzles
solution, but rather in the way the applicant has arrived at it

Interviews involving puzzles should be evaluated against
traditional interviews, which have been found deficient in
several documented studies

Its possible to alleviate the difficulty caused by the wide
availability of a rather limited set of interview puzzles
3 Types of Interview Puzzles
Not all interview puzzles are created equal! One should
distinguish among 3 types of puzzles:

puzzling questions

logic puzzles

algorithmic puzzles

Examples of Puzzling Questions
How long would it take to move Mount Fuji?

Why are manhole covers round rather than square?

If you could remove any of the fifty U.S. states, which would
it be?
Example of a Logic Puzzle
There are three boxes. One of them has red balls only, one has
blue balls only, and the third has a mixture of red and blue
balls. The boxes are labeled with labels red, blue, and
mixed but all the labels are wrong. Is it possible to pick one
box and pick only one ball from it and then correctly label all
the three boxes?
Example of an Algorithmic Puzzle
Locker door problem You are at one end of a hallway lined
with n closed lockers. You make n passes along the lockers
returning to the starting point after each pass. On the first
pass, you open all the lockers. On the second pass, you close
every second locker. In general, on the i-th pass, you toggle
every i-th locker, i.e., open it if it was closed and close it if it
was open. What lockers will be open after the last pass and
how many such lockers will be there?

Advantages of Algorithmic Puzzles for Interviews
Unlike the other types of puzzles, nobody can claim that
solving such puzzles is unrelated to the job skills needed for
success in the software industry.

They test the algorithmic problem-solving skills of an
applicant in a way divorced from programming skills, which
should be tested separately.

Unlike logic puzzles, many algorithmic puzzles have
reasonable alternative solutions. This allows for evaluation the
interviewees performance on a more nuanced scale.
Are puzzles still asked in interviews?
Microsoft no

Google sometimes?

Others yes

Q & A