siteswap-sudoku 1.2

This is a program for generating somewhat Sudoku-like puzzles involving the juggling pattern notation Siteswap. For an overview of what the puzzles are about and a description of an earlier implementation, visit my blog.

You can download the source or the latest version of this program from GitHub.

Usage

To use siteswap-sudoku you need a Java VM installed. It's very likely you have one on your system already. If not, get it from Sun.

Invoke the program like this

java -jar siteswap-sudoku.jar

and it will generate a 3x4 puzzle with 5 unknowns, which are the default values. Invoke it like this

java -jar siteswap-sudoku.jar --help

and it will give you a summary of the command line options. The most important options are --rows, --cols and --unknowns. For example, to generate a 5x6 puzzle with 18 unknowns, do

java -jar siteswap-sudoku.jar --rows 5 --cols 6 --unknowns 18

If you want to see some progress messages along the way, use --verbose.

An important option is --complex-rules: In contrast to the original puzzle rules, this program does not by default require that all siteswaps be different. If you do want all siteswaps to be different, then use --complex-rules. Note that if you do use that option, the resulting puzzles might have some solutions where two or more siteswaps are the same - it's your job to find the one solution where there are no two identical siteswaps.

Note that the complex rule requirement that all siteswaps be different does not apply to siteswaps with period 1. It also does not apply to any pair of siteswaps with different periods, i.e. 51 is considered different from 5151.

If you want to generate a puzzle with a non-rectangular shape, use the --shape-file option to specify a file that describes the shape. A space in that file stands for an empty square, every other character for a square that is part of a siteswap. If such a character is a digit or a lowercase letter and it falls within the range of allowed throws, then only that throw is allowed on that square. As an example, this is the same shape you would get with the options --rows 2 --cols 3:

###
###

This is the same shape, but with the throw in the upper left fixed to a 1:

1##
###

See the shapes directory for a few more interesting examples.

Hacking

To get this code to run with Clojure yourself you'll need to download the JaCoP Constraint Solver and its dependency JDom yourself and place the two JAR files in the lib/dev/ subdirectory. I haven't been able to find repositories for those two and was too lazy and ignorant to put something up myself.