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Randomised Analysis of Backtracking-based Search Algorithms in Elucidating Sudoku Puzzles Using a Dual Serial/Parallel Approach

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Inventive Computation and Information Technologies

Abstract

Sudoku is a 9\(\,\times \,\)9 grid-based puzzle. It is a game where each row, column, and 3\(\,\times \,\)3 box must have one instance of a number from 1 to 9. In present paper, we shall evaluate three different algorithmic approaches both in serial and parallel configurations that can be utilised to solve a puzzle of Sudoku to assess their comparative performance metrics for differential randomly generated Sudoku datasets. We shall utilise Breadth-first search, Depth-first search, Depth-first search with Breadth-first search parallelisation for sub-tress, for evaluating a large number of randomly generated Sudoku puzzles with a varying number of clues to find the best algorithm based on time and space complexity as well as clue complexity. With this, we shall analyse and develop a best practice algorithm that can be ideally used to solve a large number of puzzles in any given situation in the most time-efficient manner. Our analysis has found that there was a significant improvement in utilising the parallel algorithm over both the Breadth-first and Depth-first search approaches from 28% to over 56%. Even moving from Breadth-first to Depth-first search, we have gauged quite a moderate improvement in performance from 15 to 21%.

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Garg, P., Jha, A., Shukla, K.A. (2022). Randomised Analysis of Backtracking-based Search Algorithms in Elucidating Sudoku Puzzles Using a Dual Serial/Parallel Approach. In: Smys, S., Balas, V.E., Palanisamy, R. (eds) Inventive Computation and Information Technologies. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 336. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6723-7_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6723-7_21

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-16-6722-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-16-6723-7

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