Queens' Quarrel (Compute's Gazette)
Based on puzzle originally devised in the mid-1800s by the great mathematician, Karl Friedrich Gauss, Eight haughty queens have quarreled, and now each one refuses to speak with any of the other seven. The question is, how do you place the queens on an 8 X 8 chessboard to give each queen sole possession of her row, column, and two diagonals? Those of you familiar with the game of chess will realize this means that no two of the pieces on the board can be in line horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.
Why TAS This Game?
The continuation of TASing games from my all-time favorite magazine, Compute's Gazette. This makes my 24th TAS from this series.
I liked chess back in those days and I had to have this. I didn't realize that it was a puzzle though. Well, it was a proud addition to my collection.
Previous Compute's Gazette submissions include (In order of submission):
Game Ending
The game is over, when all eight Queens are placed on the board...without any conflicts.
Effort In TASing
This was easy. You know the solution, you have the answer to beating this game.
DrD2k9: Not a very complicated process from an input standpoint.
As mentioned in the submission notes, simply knowing a solution ahead of time makes a TAS of this rather straightforward, requiring simple placement of the queens in the correct positions. While an assumption could be made that all 92 possible solution layouts would require the same amount of time to complete, it is theoretically possible that one of the other layouts could still yield a faster TAS depending on way the game evaluates for conflicts given the current piece placement. However, proving that all 92 are identical or proving that one layout is indeed fastest would require testing them all individually to confirm and may only yield a handful of frames difference if any.
As-is, nothing about this run appears sub-optimal. If someone were to find a faster layout, it should obsolete this run. Accepting.
