THE N-QUEEN PROBLEM

Shrinath Tailor
 Introduction
 N-Queens dates back to the 19th century (studied by Gauss)
 Classical combinatorial problem, widely used as a
benchmark because of its simple and regular structure
 Problem involves placing N queens on an N *N
chessboard such that no queen can attack any other
 Benchmark code versions include finding the first solution
and finding all solutions

Shrinath Tailor
 The n-queen problem
 What is its input?
Ans. Positive integer n
 What is its task??
Ans. Place n queens on an n by n chessboard so that no two queens attack each
other (on same row, column, diagonal), or report that this is impossible.
 Solving particular problem for the different values of n=1,2,3,4.
 Pure brute force search
 16 squares on a 4 by 4 chessboard
 Leads to 16 * 15 * 14 * 13 = 43,680 possible solutions
Shrinath Tailor
 For the larger values of n
 n=8
At most one queen per row: 88 = 16,777,216
Early backtracking: 2057 nodes total • Time to find
first solution: 114 nodes
 n=12
At most one queen per row: 1212
Early backtracking: 856,189 nodes total
Time to find first solution: 262 nodes
Shrinath Tailor
 N-Queens Solutions
Various approaches to the problem •
 Brute force
 Local search algorithms
 Backtracking
 Divide and conquer approach
 Permutation generation
 Mathematical solutions
 Graph theory concepts
Shrinath Tailor
 The backtracking method
 A given problem has a set of constraints and possibly an objective
function
 The solution optimizes an objective function, and/or is feasible.
 We can represent the solution space for the problem using a -
• The root of the tree represents 0 choices,
• Nodes at depth 1 represent first choice
• Nodes at depth 2 represent the second choice, etc.
• In this tree a path from a root to a leaf represents a
Shrinath Tailor

candidate solution
 Solution of 4 – queen’s with the help of backtracking

The B denotes the dead node.

Shrinath Tailor
 NQueens(k,n)
Algorithm
//Using backtracking,this procedure prints all possible
//placements of n queens on an n*n
//chessboard so that they are non attacking
{
for(i=1 to n ) do
{ if Place(k,i) then
{
x[k]=i;
If(k=n) then
write (x[1:n]);
else Nqueens(k+1,n);
}
Shrinath Tailor }
}
 Algorithm

Algorithm Place(k,i)

For j=1 to k-1 do

if((x[j]=i) //same colum or (Abs(x[j]-i)=Abs(j-k)))//same diagonal then

return false;

Return true;

Shrinath Tailor
 Thank you !!!

Shrinath Tailor
Shrinath Tailor
Shrinath Tailor