On Jigsaw Puzzle Solving and Computer Chess by James Pate Williams, Jr.

I have been playing a jigsaw puzzle app on my Microsoft desktop. The name of the app is “Jigsaw Puzzle HD”. I get one free puzzle per day. I set the number of pieces to 49 which is a 7 by 7 square. It takes me approximately 10 to 20 minutes to solve puzzle. The pieces are large on my Dell display but there is not room to spare using a maximized window and 49 pieces.

Here are some tips I have learned about jigsaw puzzle solving (an algorithm):

  • Roughly separate the pieces by color
  • Separate the four boundaries out from the sorted pieces
  • Construct the four boundaries of the puzzle
  • Use a sharper color sort to really untangle the middle pieces
  • Solve small areas of the middle of the puzzle
  • Iterate the preceding steps until the solution is found

I have a nice chess playing app on my desktop computer named “The Chess Lv. 100”. This chess game has 100 levels and Level 1’s Rating is 258 and Level 100’s Rating is 2300. I have a Level 12 Rating of 849 which is probably lower than my United States Chess Federation Rating back in the era 1968 to 1971. I play Level 8 to 12 computer opponents and sometimes venture as high as Level 25 which has a rating of 1094. Here is some information about the United States Chess Federation ratings:

US Chess Federation:

I do not have a simple algorithm for chess, but do not make blunders and try to look several moves into future before you move. Also a good working knowledge of openings, middle-games, and end-games helps.

Unknown's avatar

Author: jamespatewilliamsjr

My whole legal name is James Pate Williams, Jr. I was born in LaGrange, Georgia approximately 70 years ago. I barely graduated from LaGrange High School with low marks in June 1971. Later in June 1979, I graduated from LaGrange College with a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry with a little over a 3 out 4 Grade Point Average (GPA). In the Spring Quarter of 1978, I taught myself how to program a Texas Instruments desktop programmable calculator and in the Summer Quarter of 1978 I taught myself Dayton BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) on LaGrange College's Data General Eclipse minicomputer. I took courses in BASIC in the Fall Quarter of 1978 and FORTRAN IV (Formula Translator IV) in the Winter Quarter of 1979. Professor Kenneth Cooper, a genius poly-scientist taught me a course in the Intel 8085 microprocessor architecture and assembly and machine language. We would hand assemble our programs and insert the resulting machine code into our crude wooden box computer which was designed and built by Professor Cooper. From 1990 to 1994 I earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from LaGrange College. I had a 4 out of 4 GPA in the period 1990 to 1994. I took courses in C, COBOL, and Pascal during my BS work. After graduating from LaGrange College a second time in May 1994, I taught myself C++. In December 1995, I started using the Internet and taught myself client-server programming. I created a website in 1997 which had C and C# implementations of algorithms from the "Handbook of Applied Cryptography" by Alfred J. Menezes, et. al., and some other cryptography and number theory textbooks and treatises.

Leave a comment