Category: Informed Search Algorithms
Blog Entry © Sunday, November 23, 2025, by James Pate Williams, Jr. Modification of My A* Informed Search Solver for the 8-Tile Puzzle
Blog Entry © Friday, November 21, 2025, by James Pate Williams, Jr., Win32 C/C++ Desktop GUI Solution of the 15-Tile Puzzle Using Iterative Deepening A* Informed Seach Algorithm
Blog Entry © Monday, November 17, 2025, by James Pate Williams, Jr. An Elitist Evolutionary Hill Climber to Solve the 8-Tile Puzzle
Blog Entry © Thursday, November 13, 2025, by James Pate Williams, Jr., A* Search to Solve the 8-Tile Puzzle
Iterative Deepening A* Search to Solve the 8-Puzzle and 15-Puzzle by James Pate Williams, Jr.
The 8-puzzle is a child’s tiled toy. The toy consists of 8 numbered tiles and a blank space. The object of the game is to get the tiles in the order 1 to 8 going from the top left hand corner for the number 1 tile around the perimeter clockwise and finish with the space in the center of the 3 x 3 board.
A* search is a complete and optimal informed or heuristic search algorithm. A good source for information on uniformed and informed search procedures is the tome “Artificial Intelligence A Modern Approach First and/or Second Edition” by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig. The second edition has more info on the 8-puzzle and the 15-puzzle. Iterative deepening A* search is also a complete and optimal search algorithm. Below is an instance of the 8-puzzle that requires 10 steps to reach the goal state. I use a different goal state than Russell and Norvig in the second edition of their textbook.
I developed an application in 2015 that uses 5 search algorithms to solve instances of the 15-puzzle.
Numerical Explorations 