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#1: Teresa K (fasstar) on Dec 31, 2009 [SPOILER]

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What a beautiful ornament. It was a little tricky to solve, but lots of fun. Thanks Teresa.

Thanks, Adam and Telly and Jewel. I gave up trying to solve it with just line logic. :-)

A tricky solve and a beautiful puzzle. Thanks, Teresa!

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Oops. The program uses zero-based indexes, and I forgot to translate them to one-based indexes. I've edited my previous comment to add one to each index.

Simply amazing. :D

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So how come the computer can mark it as line logic solvable, but then can't solve it?

Two different programs. Checker and helper work differently.

I guess that makes sense. I figured they would run the same. I think helper is not that useful, since it misses a lot of things.

The helper is a tiny little program that runs in your browser. It's goal is to help out puzzle designers who have to repeatedly solve different versions of the same puzzle over and over again. It deliberately does only the easy parts for you, while giving you an chance to examine the tricky bits.

The checker is a fairly large and complex program that runs on the web server. It's designed to be a full autonomous solver. It's used to give puzzle designers instant feedback n whether their puzzle has multiple solutions and whether it is solvable with only line and color logic. I've open sourced it so you can get it from http://webpbn.com/pbnsolve.html . I've also done a lot of analysis of it, to compare it's performance to other nonogram solvers written by other people here http://webpbn.com/survey/ . It can solve most puzzles in less than a tenth of a second. There are only two puzzles on the site that take it more than two minutes.

Though the two solvers have some points of similarity, the helper is a Ford Pinto, and the checker is a Ford GT. (OK, I'm from SE Michigan).

Just out of curiosity, which 2 puzzles might those be?
And by the way, any thoughts on why I can't use the "L" key feature?

I messed up there. I was only counting black & white puzzles. The two black and white puzzles that it takes more than 2 minutes to solve are #6574, a really brilliant Gator puzzle, which takes 17 minutes, and #2556, a mess with a pile of multiple solutions. There are 6 color puzzles it takes more than 2 minutes on and I don't remember what they are.

It solves 98.5% of all puzzles in under a tenth of a second. On webpbn it automatically gets cut off after one second, since I don't want the whole website bogging down because the checker is analyzing a puzzle. I believe there are currently 17 puzzles in can't solve in a second.

Nonogram puzzle solving is known to be one of a class of hard problems known as "NP-complete" problems. They have the interesting property that if anyone managed to find a reliably fast algorithm to solve any one of them, then you could use variations of the same algorithm to solve all of them, and become instantly rich and famous, because it includes a huge number of problems of great practical importance. The checker is not going to make me rich and famous.

Great puzzle! I really enjoyed solving it and getting past the tricky bits. I didn't ever get stuck or frustrated, but I did use some edge logic. Really fun. :)

Thanks, Diana. That was quite an accomplishment to finish solving with logic. I think this is the most difficult one of my own that I have solved.

Quite beautiful! A lovely illustration of a memorial event. Very tough to solve because it was a little tedious; but no guessing.

I finally made it through with only line logic no hints!!! Teresa, I did agonize over it but only because I wanted! :)

After David's comment, I checked the comments. Then I HAD to resolve this one. I love the line logic in the puzzle.

Me too! There were a couple of dots that were SO satisfying to find! I didn't track my solve, but it was great fun!

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