Following on from my last game, I wanted to test the negamax algorithm on a large search space. On a classic sized board there are 4,531,985,219,092 positions. Try It Now

I recently heard of the negamax search, which is a alternative to minimax but with simpler implementation. I am interested to see how well a chess solver will perform with negamax with and without alpha-beta optimization. Try It Now.

The Letters Round is the heart of the Countdown game show, and after creating a game and solver for the numbers round I felt obliged to create a solver for the Letters Round.Try It Now.

While creating the Numbers Game, I envisioned creating a solver for the puzzle to support gameplay. One advantage of creating a solver was to avoid choosing a target that didn’t have a perfect solution.

It became clear that it was faster to compute the total by randomly selecting numbers and operators rather than picking a target randomly and trying to solve the problem.

I continued to create the Numbers Round Solver despite not requiring a solver for the actual game. It proved to be an interesting project, and a handy little app. Try It Now.

In the UK there is a cult TV series called Countdown. The program tests contestants using a variety of games but most notably the Letters Round and Numbers Round.

I created a fairly easy to use game, based on the numbers game. The app once again is created in JavaScript, HTML and CSS, allowing the game to be converted into an app for most smart phones. Play Now.

Most programmers seem to enjoy logical problems as well as of course programming. But there is something better, writing an efficient program to either solve or create more of the same puzzles.

While working through some project Euler challenges, I programmed a backtracking algorithm in C++ to solve Sudoku problems C++ solver. Well I wanted to use this code to create an app, so I created an HTML and CSS interface and solver and rewrote the code in JavaScript. The app can be downloaded from phonegap, or to test it out in a browser at sudoku-solver.

Writing this post leads me to think why I should create a github page at all? Basically because I wanted to experiment with Jekyll. I don’t intend to update this blog regularly but this may well end up being a place I store odd bits of info just in case I need it in the future.