SupplementSudoku.docVIP

Supplement: Case Study: Sudoku For Introduction to Java Programming By Y. Daniel Liang This case study can be presented after Chapter 7, “Multidimensional Arrays.” This book teaches you how to program using a wide variety of problems with various levels of difficulty. We use simple, short, and stimulating examples to introduce programming and problem-solving techniques and use interesting and challenging examples to motivate students in programming. This supplement presents an interesting problem of a sort that appears in the newspaper every day. It is a number-placement puzzle, commonly known as Sudoku. 1 Problem Description Side Remark: fixed cells Side Remark: free cells Sudoku is a 9×9 grid divided into smaller 3×3 boxes (also called regions or blocks), as shown in Figure 1(a). Some cells, called fixed cells, are populated with numbers from 1 to 9. The objective is to fill the empty cells, also called free cells, with numbers 1 to 9 so that every row, every column, and every 3×3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9, as shown in Figure 1(b). (a) Input (b) Output Figure 1 (b) is the solution to the Sudoku puzzle in (a). Side Remark: representing a grid For convenience, we use value 0 to indicate a free cell, as shown in Figure 2(a). The grid can be naturally represented using a two-dimensional array, as shown in Figure 2(a). (a) (b) Figure 2 A grid can be represented using a two-dimensional array. 2 Problem-Solving Strategy How do you solve this problem? An intuitive approach to solve this problem is to employ the following three rules: Rule 1: Fill in free cells from the first to the last. Rule 2: Fill in a smallest number possible. Rule 3: If no number can fill in a free cell, backtrack. For example, you can fill 1 into grid[0][2], 2 into grid[0][3], 4 into grid[0][5], 8 into grid[0][6], and 9 into grid[0][7], as shown in