Nmbr9 as a Constraint Programming Challenge
This work addresses a domain-specific combinatorial problem for constraint programming researchers, but it is incremental as it focuses on modeling and benchmarking without achieving a breakthrough in solving the open challenge.
The paper tackles the challenge of modeling the board game Nmbr9 using constraint programming, presenting new generalized variants for benchmarking and a model for these variants, but does not report specific numerical results for the top score.
Modern board games are a rich source of interesting and new challenges for combinatorial problems. The game Nmbr9 is a solitaire style puzzle game using polyominoes. The rules of the game are simple to explain, but modelling the game effectively using constraint programming is hard. This abstract presents the game, contributes new generalized variants of the game suitable for benchmarking and testing, and describes a model for the presented variants. The question of the top possible score in the standard game is an open challenge.