Tetris Cube Puzzle Solver

Shortly after my first year university examinations, I begun a summer Java project attempting to solve the Tetris Cube Puzzle and the Bedlam Cube Puzzle. After the summer, I still hadn’t managed to solve the problem, and I put the project on hold as I entered my second year of studying. Here’s a photo of what the program looked like running on my MacBook after the summer.

It’s old school stuff! Just some command line output to look at, which I limited to simply giving some kind of estimate as to how far through the combinations the solver had got.

Over the summer after my second year, I picked up the project again. I’d become considerably more experienced developing in Objective-C than I was at Java, so I decided to first convert the entire project to Objective-C, and then continue developing. I also added some OpenGL visuals so that you could see the puzzle being solved. Here’s a screenshot of the current Mac OS X version of the application.

I also wrote a version of the puzzle solver for the iPhone and the iPad, making use of the touch screens as a mechanism for rotating the puzzle as it’s being solved.

I was always aware of the fact that these puzzles had already been solved using computers, but I found that attempting to solve the puzzle on my own immensely beneficial. I refused to look at the details Kurowski’s solution as I’d much rather find my own! Besides, this solution is written in C++, and doesn’t (yet!) support visualisations.