Finding effective search strategies for the TwoBik puzzle
Colin Hemphill, Joshua Sheehy · 2012
In a "TwoBik Puzzle," a player must move rows and columns which wrap around a torus to reach a specified sequence of tiles. This type of puzzle has attributes that resemble a combination of the N-Puzzle and the Rubik's Cube, however little research has been published directly related to the TwoBik Puzzle and how to effectively solve it using heuristic search strategies. Instances of the TwoBik puzzle up to a 3x3 board size are mostly trivial to solve using informed and even uninformed search strategies, but larger boards are substantially more difficult. Even a modest 4x4 board is nearly impossible to solve without a proper heuristic, and can be difficult for the average human player. In order to find the most efficient method of solving a toroidal puzzle of this type, we employ a number of search algorithms and heuristics and record our findings.