Your computer as a jigsaw solver

Do you know Pentominos? There are twelve jigsaw pieces which are to arrange to given shapes, e.g. a 6×10 rectangle:

Coloured set of Pentominos® pieces with inserting frame

When your have such a set of pieces from your earlier time, tried to solve the shape of the last level and you have thrown these pieces into the most behind drawer with the comment: »I never will complete that in my life!«, then it's highest time to give that problem to your PC with the polyform jigsaw solver. This program searches all accompanying possibilities of insertion from a given set of pieces (file *.TLS) as soon as a inlay field (file *.FLD). You may draw up these both files with your preferred ASCII text editor in form of

*..
***
\
***
.*.
\
**
**
\

(* = material, . = empty space) as soon as the inlay field,

***..
.....
.....

then start the jigsaw solver immediately. You can lovely watch your PC's solving process. Finally you receive the result as a simple DOS text file, the solved shapes considering as frame text characters (ASCII values 179 to 218).

Screen shot The jigsaw solver in its full action!

There are a few of predefined inlay fields and pieces sets included in the compressed .ZIP archive, there's also a compiled version (files *.EXE) for users of older PC machines to improving the solving speed. POLYLOE4.BAS and POLYLOE6.BAS produce the same result but they work with different algorithms internally, e.g. POLYLOE6 always tries to fill the small gaps immediately. Have a lot of fun and I wish you a good cooling (I already let working my PC a few of nights non-stop at only one problem!) for you PC while solving jigsaws!


Go on! Give me that! I want that thing!

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© 1996, 1998 by Andreas Meile