最近我一直在iPhone上玩一款名为《Scramble》的游戏。有些人可能知道这个游戏叫拼字游戏。从本质上讲,当游戏开始时,你会得到一个字母矩阵:

F X I E
A M L O
E W B X
A S T U

The goal of the game is to find as many words as you can that can be formed by chaining letters together. You can start with any letter, and all the letters that surround it are fair game, and then once you move on to the next letter, all the letters that surround that letter are fair game, except for any previously used letters. So in the grid above, for example, I could come up with the words LOB, TUX, SEA, FAME, etc. Words must be at least 3 characters, and no more than NxN characters, which would be 16 in this game but can vary in some implementations. While this game is fun and addictive, I am apparently not very good at it and I wanted to cheat a little bit by making a program that would give me the best possible words (the longer the word the more points you get).

(来源:boggled.org)

不幸的是,我不太擅长算法或它们的效率等等。我的第一次尝试使用一个像这样的字典(约2.3MB),并进行线性搜索,试图匹配字典条目的组合。这需要花费很长时间来找到可能的单词,因为你每轮只有2分钟的时间,这是不够的。

我很有兴趣看看是否有任何Stackoverflowers可以提出更有效的解决方案。我主要是在寻找使用三大p的解决方案:Python、PHP和Perl,尽管任何使用Java或c++的东西也很酷,因为速度是至关重要的。

目前的解决方案:

Adam Rosenfield, Python, ~20岁 John Fouhy, Python, ~3秒 Kent Fredric, Perl, ~1s Darius Bacon, Python, ~1s rvarcher, VB。净,~ 1 s Paolo Bergantino, PHP(实时链接),~5s(本地~2s)


当前回答

当我看到问题陈述时,我想到了“Trie”。但看到其他一些海报使用了这种方法,我寻找另一种不同的方法。可惜的是,Trie方法表现更好。我在我的机器上运行了Kent的Perl解决方案,在调整它以使用我的字典文件后,它花了0.31秒运行。我自己的perl实现需要0.54秒才能运行。

这就是我的方法:

Create a transition hash to model the legal transitions. Iterate through all 16^3 possible three letter combinations. In the loop, exclude illegal transitions and repeat visits to the same square. Form all the legal 3-letter sequences and store them in a hash. Then loop through all words in the dictionary. Exclude words that are too long or short Slide a 3-letter window across each word and see if it is among the 3-letter combos from step 2. Exclude words that fail. This eliminates most non-matches. If still not eliminated, use a recursive algorithm to see if the word can be formed by making paths through the puzzle. (This part is slow, but called infrequently.) Print out the words I found. I tried 3-letter and 4-letter sequences, but 4-letter sequences slowed the program down.

在我的代码中,我使用/usr/share/dict/words作为我的字典。它是MAC OS X和许多Unix系统的标准配置。如果你愿意,你可以使用另一个文件。要破解不同的谜题,只需更改变量@puzzle。这将很容易适应更大的矩阵。你只需要改变%transitions哈希值和%legalTransitions哈希值。

这种解决方案的优点是代码短,数据结构简单。

下面是Perl代码(我知道它使用了太多的全局变量):

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Time::HiRes  qw{ time };

sub readFile($);
sub findAllPrefixes($);
sub isWordTraceable($);
sub findWordsInPuzzle(@);

my $startTime = time;

# Puzzle to solve

my @puzzle = ( 
    F, X, I, E,
    A, M, L, O,
    E, W, B, X,
    A, S, T, U
);

my $minimumWordLength = 3;
my $maximumPrefixLength = 3; # I tried four and it slowed down.

# Slurp the word list.
my $wordlistFile = "/usr/share/dict/words";

my @words = split(/\n/, uc(readFile($wordlistFile)));
print "Words loaded from word list: " . scalar @words . "\n";

print "Word file load time: " . (time - $startTime) . "\n";
my $postLoad = time;

# Define the legal transitions from one letter position to another. 
# Positions are numbered 0-15.
#     0  1  2  3
#     4  5  6  7
#     8  9 10 11
#    12 13 14 15
my %transitions = ( 
   -1 => [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15],
    0 => [1,4,5], 
    1 => [0,2,4,5,6],
    2 => [1,3,5,6,7],
    3 => [2,6,7],
    4 => [0,1,5,8,9],
    5 => [0,1,2,4,6,8,9,10],
    6 => [1,2,3,5,7,9,10,11],
    7 => [2,3,6,10,11],
    8 => [4,5,9,12,13],
    9 => [4,5,6,8,10,12,13,14],
    10 => [5,6,7,9,11,13,14,15],
    11 => [6,7,10,14,15],
    12 => [8,9,13],
    13 => [8,9,10,12,14],
    14 => [9,10,11,13,15],
    15 => [10,11,14]
);

# Convert the transition matrix into a hash for easy access.
my %legalTransitions = ();
foreach my $start (keys %transitions) {
    my $legalRef = $transitions{$start};
    foreach my $stop (@$legalRef) {
        my $index = ($start + 1) * (scalar @puzzle) + ($stop + 1);
        $legalTransitions{$index} = 1;
    }
}

my %prefixesInPuzzle = findAllPrefixes($maximumPrefixLength);

print "Find prefixes time: " . (time - $postLoad) . "\n";
my $postPrefix = time;

my @wordsFoundInPuzzle = findWordsInPuzzle(@words);

print "Find words in puzzle time: " . (time - $postPrefix) . "\n";

print "Unique prefixes found: " . (scalar keys %prefixesInPuzzle) . "\n";
print "Words found (" . (scalar @wordsFoundInPuzzle) . ") :\n    " . join("\n    ", @wordsFoundInPuzzle) . "\n";

print "Total Elapsed time: " . (time - $startTime) . "\n";

###########################################

sub readFile($) {
    my ($filename) = @_;
    my $contents;
    if (-e $filename) {
        # This is magic: it opens and reads a file into a scalar in one line of code. 
        # See http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2003/11/21/slurp.html
        $contents = do { local( @ARGV, $/ ) = $filename ; <> } ; 
    }
    else {
        $contents = '';
    }
    return $contents;
}

# Is it legal to move from the first position to the second? They must be adjacent.
sub isLegalTransition($$) {
    my ($pos1,$pos2) = @_;
    my $index = ($pos1 + 1) * (scalar @puzzle) + ($pos2 + 1);
    return $legalTransitions{$index};
}

# Find all prefixes where $minimumWordLength <= length <= $maxPrefixLength
#
#   $maxPrefixLength ... Maximum length of prefix we will store. Three gives best performance. 
sub findAllPrefixes($) {
    my ($maxPrefixLength) = @_;
    my %prefixes = ();
    my $puzzleSize = scalar @puzzle;

    # Every possible N-letter combination of the letters in the puzzle 
    # can be represented as an integer, though many of those combinations
    # involve illegal transitions, duplicated letters, etc.
    # Iterate through all those possibilities and eliminate the illegal ones.
    my $maxIndex = $puzzleSize ** $maxPrefixLength;

    for (my $i = 0; $i < $maxIndex; $i++) {
        my @path;
        my $remainder = $i;
        my $prevPosition = -1;
        my $prefix = '';
        my %usedPositions = ();
        for (my $prefixLength = 1; $prefixLength <= $maxPrefixLength; $prefixLength++) {
            my $position = $remainder % $puzzleSize;

            # Is this a valid step?
            #  a. Is the transition legal (to an adjacent square)?
            if (! isLegalTransition($prevPosition, $position)) {
                last;
            }

            #  b. Have we repeated a square?
            if ($usedPositions{$position}) {
                last;
            }
            else {
                $usedPositions{$position} = 1;
            }

            # Record this prefix if length >= $minimumWordLength.
            $prefix .= $puzzle[$position];
            if ($prefixLength >= $minimumWordLength) {
                $prefixes{$prefix} = 1;
            }

            push @path, $position;
            $remainder -= $position;
            $remainder /= $puzzleSize;
            $prevPosition = $position;
        } # end inner for
    } # end outer for
    return %prefixes;
}

# Loop through all words in dictionary, looking for ones that are in the puzzle.
sub findWordsInPuzzle(@) {
    my @allWords = @_;
    my @wordsFound = ();
    my $puzzleSize = scalar @puzzle;
WORD: foreach my $word (@allWords) {
        my $wordLength = length($word);
        if ($wordLength > $puzzleSize || $wordLength < $minimumWordLength) {
            # Reject word as too short or too long.
        }
        elsif ($wordLength <= $maximumPrefixLength ) {
            # Word should be in the prefix hash.
            if ($prefixesInPuzzle{$word}) {
                push @wordsFound, $word;
            }
        }
        else {
            # Scan through the word using a window of length $maximumPrefixLength, looking for any strings not in our prefix list.
            # If any are found that are not in the list, this word is not possible.
            # If no non-matches are found, we have more work to do.
            my $limit = $wordLength - $maximumPrefixLength + 1;
            for (my $startIndex = 0; $startIndex < $limit; $startIndex ++) {
                if (! $prefixesInPuzzle{substr($word, $startIndex, $maximumPrefixLength)}) {
                    next WORD;
                }
            }
            if (isWordTraceable($word)) {
                # Additional test necessary: see if we can form this word by following legal transitions
                push @wordsFound, $word;
            }
        }

    }
    return @wordsFound;
}

# Is it possible to trace out the word using only legal transitions?
sub isWordTraceable($) {
    my $word = shift;
    return traverse([split(//, $word)], [-1]); # Start at special square -1, which may transition to any square in the puzzle.
}

# Recursively look for a path through the puzzle that matches the word.
sub traverse($$) {
    my ($lettersRef, $pathRef) = @_;
    my $index = scalar @$pathRef - 1;
    my $position = $pathRef->[$index];
    my $letter = $lettersRef->[$index];
    my $branchesRef =  $transitions{$position};
BRANCH: foreach my $branch (@$branchesRef) {
            if ($puzzle[$branch] eq $letter) {
                # Have we used this position yet?
                foreach my $usedBranch (@$pathRef) {
                    if ($usedBranch == $branch) {
                        next BRANCH;
                    }
                }
                if (scalar @$lettersRef == $index + 1) {
                    return 1; # End of word and success.
                }
                push @$pathRef, $branch;
                if (traverse($lettersRef, $pathRef)) {
                    return 1; # Recursive success.
                }
                else {
                    pop @$pathRef;
                }
            }
        }
    return 0; # No path found. Failed.
}

其他回答

我认为你可能会花大部分时间去匹配那些不可能由你的字母网格构成的单词。所以,我要做的第一件事就是加快这一步,这应该能让你大致达到目的。

为此,我将把网格重新表示为一个可能的“移动”表,您可以根据您正在查看的字母转换对其进行索引。

首先从你的字母表中给每个字母分配一个数字(a =0, B=1, C=2,…等等)。

让我们举个例子:

h b c d
e e g h
l l k l
m o f p

现在,让我们使用现有字母的字母表(通常你可能每次都想使用相同的字母表):

 b | c | d | e | f | g | h | k | l | m |  o |  p
---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+----
 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11

然后你创建一个2D布尔数组,告诉你是否有某个字母转换可用:

     |  0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11  <- from letter
     |  b  c  d  e  f  g  h  k  l  m  o  p
-----+--------------------------------------
 0 b |     T     T     T  T     
 1 c |  T     T  T     T  T
 2 d |     T           T  T
 3 e |  T  T     T     T  T  T  T
 4 f |                       T  T     T  T
 5 g |  T  T  T  T        T  T  T
 6 h |  T  T  T  T     T     T  T
 7 k |           T  T  T  T     T     T  T
 8 l |           T  T  T  T  T  T  T  T  T
 9 m |                          T     T
10 o |              T        T  T  T
11 p |              T        T  T
 ^
 to letter

现在浏览单词列表,将单词转换为过渡段:

hello (6, 3, 8, 8, 10):
6 -> 3, 3 -> 8, 8 -> 8, 8 -> 10

然后检查这些转换是否允许通过在你的表中查找它们:

[6][ 3] : T
[3][ 8] : T
[8][ 8] : T
[8][10] : T

如果它们都被允许,就有可能找到这个词。

例如,单词“头盔”可以在第4个转换(m到e:头盔)时被排除,因为表中的这个条目是假的。

单词hamster可以被排除,因为第一个(h到a)的转换是不允许的(在你的表中甚至不存在)。

现在,对于可能剩下的很少几个你没有删除的单词,试着按照你现在做的方法或在这里的其他答案中建议的方法在网格中找到它们。这是为了避免网格中相同字母之间的跳转导致的误报。例如,表格允许使用单词“help”,但网格不允许。

关于这个想法的一些进一步的性能改进技巧:

Instead of using a 2D array, use a 1D array and simply compute the index of the second letter yourself. So, instead of a 12x12 array like above, make a 1D array of length 144. If you then always use the same alphabet (i.e. a 26x26 = 676x1 array for the standard english alphabet), even if not all letters show up in your grid, you can pre-compute the indices into this 1D array that you need to test to match your dictionary words. For example, the indices for 'hello' in the example above would be hello (6, 3, 8, 8, 10): 42 (from 6 + 3x12), 99, 104, 128 -> "hello" will be stored as 42, 99, 104, 128 in the dictionary Extend the idea to a 3D table (expressed as a 1D array), i.e. all allowed 3-letter combinations. That way you can eliminate even more words immediately and you reduce the number of array lookups for each word by 1: For 'hello', you only need 3 array lookups: hel, ell, llo. It will be very quick to build this table, by the way, as there are only 400 possible 3-letter-moves in your grid. Pre-compute the indices of the moves in your grid that you need to include in your table. For the example above, you need to set the following entries to 'True': (0,0) (0,1) -> here: h, b : [6][0] (0,0) (1,0) -> here: h, e : [6][3] (0,0) (1,1) -> here: h, e : [6][3] (0,1) (0,0) -> here: b, h : [0][6] (0,1) (0,2) -> here: b, c : [0][1] . : Also represent your game grid in a 1-D array with 16 entries and have the table pre-computed in 3. contain the indices into this array.

我相信如果您使用这种方法,您可以让您的代码运行得非常快,如果您预先计算了字典并已经加载到内存中。

顺便说一句:如果你正在创造一款游戏,你可以在后台立即运行这些内容。在用户仍然盯着你的应用标题屏幕,并将手指放在按“Play”的位置时开始生成和解决第一款游戏。然后在用户玩前一款游戏时生成并解决下一款游戏。这应该会给您很多时间来运行代码。

(我喜欢这个问题,所以我可能会忍不住在未来几天的某个时候用Java实现我的提议,看看它实际上是如何执行的……一旦我这样做,我将在这里张贴代码。)

更新:

好的,我今天有一些时间在Java中实现了这个想法:

class DictionaryEntry {
  public int[] letters;
  public int[] triplets;
}

class BoggleSolver {

  // Constants
  final int ALPHABET_SIZE = 5;  // up to 2^5 = 32 letters
  final int BOARD_SIZE    = 4;  // 4x4 board
  final int[] moves = {-BOARD_SIZE-1, -BOARD_SIZE, -BOARD_SIZE+1, 
                                  -1,                         +1,
                       +BOARD_SIZE-1, +BOARD_SIZE, +BOARD_SIZE+1};


  // Technically constant (calculated here for flexibility, but should be fixed)
  DictionaryEntry[] dictionary; // Processed word list
  int maxWordLength = 0;
  int[] boardTripletIndices; // List of all 3-letter moves in board coordinates

  DictionaryEntry[] buildDictionary(String fileName) throws IOException {
    BufferedReader fileReader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(fileName));
    String word = fileReader.readLine();
    ArrayList<DictionaryEntry> result = new ArrayList<DictionaryEntry>();
    while (word!=null) {
      if (word.length()>=3) {
        word = word.toUpperCase();
        if (word.length()>maxWordLength) maxWordLength = word.length();
        DictionaryEntry entry = new DictionaryEntry();
        entry.letters  = new int[word.length()  ];
        entry.triplets = new int[word.length()-2];
        int i=0;
        for (char letter: word.toCharArray()) {
          entry.letters[i] = (byte) letter - 65; // Convert ASCII to 0..25
          if (i>=2)
            entry.triplets[i-2] = (((entry.letters[i-2]  << ALPHABET_SIZE) +
                                     entry.letters[i-1]) << ALPHABET_SIZE) +
                                     entry.letters[i];
          i++;
        }
        result.add(entry);
      }
      word = fileReader.readLine();
    }
    return result.toArray(new DictionaryEntry[result.size()]);
  }

  boolean isWrap(int a, int b) { // Checks if move a->b wraps board edge (like 3->4)
    return Math.abs(a%BOARD_SIZE-b%BOARD_SIZE)>1;
  }

  int[] buildTripletIndices() {
    ArrayList<Integer> result = new ArrayList<Integer>();
    for (int a=0; a<BOARD_SIZE*BOARD_SIZE; a++)
      for (int bm: moves) {
        int b=a+bm;
        if ((b>=0) && (b<board.length) && !isWrap(a, b))
          for (int cm: moves) {
            int c=b+cm;
            if ((c>=0) && (c<board.length) && (c!=a) && !isWrap(b, c)) {
              result.add(a);
              result.add(b);
              result.add(c);
            }
          }
      }
    int[] result2 = new int[result.size()];
    int i=0;
    for (Integer r: result) result2[i++] = r;
    return result2;
  }


  // Variables that depend on the actual game layout
  int[] board = new int[BOARD_SIZE*BOARD_SIZE]; // Letters in board
  boolean[] possibleTriplets = new boolean[1 << (ALPHABET_SIZE*3)];

  DictionaryEntry[] candidateWords;
  int candidateCount;

  int[] usedBoardPositions;

  DictionaryEntry[] foundWords;
  int foundCount;

  void initializeBoard(String[] letters) {
    for (int row=0; row<BOARD_SIZE; row++)
      for (int col=0; col<BOARD_SIZE; col++)
        board[row*BOARD_SIZE + col] = (byte) letters[row].charAt(col) - 65;
  }

  void setPossibleTriplets() {
    Arrays.fill(possibleTriplets, false); // Reset list
    int i=0;
    while (i<boardTripletIndices.length) {
      int triplet = (((board[boardTripletIndices[i++]]  << ALPHABET_SIZE) +
                       board[boardTripletIndices[i++]]) << ALPHABET_SIZE) +
                       board[boardTripletIndices[i++]];
      possibleTriplets[triplet] = true; 
    }
  }

  void checkWordTriplets() {
    candidateCount = 0;
    for (DictionaryEntry entry: dictionary) {
      boolean ok = true;
      int len = entry.triplets.length;
      for (int t=0; (t<len) && ok; t++)
        ok = possibleTriplets[entry.triplets[t]];
      if (ok) candidateWords[candidateCount++] = entry;
    }
  }

  void checkWords() { // Can probably be optimized a lot
    foundCount = 0;
    for (int i=0; i<candidateCount; i++) {
      DictionaryEntry candidate = candidateWords[i];
      for (int j=0; j<board.length; j++)
        if (board[j]==candidate.letters[0]) { 
          usedBoardPositions[0] = j;
          if (checkNextLetters(candidate, 1, j)) {
            foundWords[foundCount++] = candidate;
            break;
          }
        }
    }
  }

  boolean checkNextLetters(DictionaryEntry candidate, int letter, int pos) {
    if (letter==candidate.letters.length) return true;
    int match = candidate.letters[letter];
    for (int move: moves) {
      int next=pos+move;
      if ((next>=0) && (next<board.length) && (board[next]==match) && !isWrap(pos, next)) {
        boolean ok = true;
        for (int i=0; (i<letter) && ok; i++)
          ok = usedBoardPositions[i]!=next;
        if (ok) {
          usedBoardPositions[letter] = next;
          if (checkNextLetters(candidate, letter+1, next)) return true;
        }
      }
    }   
    return false;
  }


  // Just some helper functions
  String formatTime(long start, long end, long repetitions) {
    long time = (end-start)/repetitions;
    return time/1000000 + "." + (time/100000) % 10 + "" + (time/10000) % 10 + "ms";
  }

  String getWord(DictionaryEntry entry) {
    char[] result = new char[entry.letters.length];
    int i=0;
    for (int letter: entry.letters)
      result[i++] = (char) (letter+97);
    return new String(result);
  }

  void run() throws IOException {
    long start = System.nanoTime();

    // The following can be pre-computed and should be replaced by constants
    dictionary = buildDictionary("C:/TWL06.txt");
    boardTripletIndices = buildTripletIndices();
    long precomputed = System.nanoTime();


    // The following only needs to run once at the beginning of the program
    candidateWords     = new DictionaryEntry[dictionary.length]; // WAAAY too generous
    foundWords         = new DictionaryEntry[dictionary.length]; // WAAAY too generous
    usedBoardPositions = new int[maxWordLength];
    long initialized = System.nanoTime(); 

    for (int n=1; n<=100; n++) {
      // The following needs to run again for every new board
      initializeBoard(new String[] {"DGHI",
                                    "KLPS",
                                    "YEUT",
                                    "EORN"});
      setPossibleTriplets();
      checkWordTriplets();
      checkWords();
    }
    long solved = System.nanoTime();


    // Print out result and statistics
    System.out.println("Precomputation finished in " + formatTime(start, precomputed, 1)+":");
    System.out.println("  Words in the dictionary: "+dictionary.length);
    System.out.println("  Longest word:            "+maxWordLength+" letters");
    System.out.println("  Number of triplet-moves: "+boardTripletIndices.length/3);
    System.out.println();

    System.out.println("Initialization finished in " + formatTime(precomputed, initialized, 1));
    System.out.println();

    System.out.println("Board solved in "+formatTime(initialized, solved, 100)+":");
    System.out.println("  Number of candidates: "+candidateCount);
    System.out.println("  Number of actual words: "+foundCount);
    System.out.println();

    System.out.println("Words found:");
    int w=0;
    System.out.print("  ");
    for (int i=0; i<foundCount; i++) {
      System.out.print(getWord(foundWords[i]));
      w++;
      if (w==10) {
        w=0;
        System.out.println(); System.out.print("  ");
      } else
        if (i<foundCount-1) System.out.print(", ");
    }
    System.out.println();
  }

  public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
    new BoggleSolver().run();
  }
}

以下是一些结果:

对于原始问题(DGHI…)中发布的图片的网格:

Precomputation finished in 239.59ms:
  Words in the dictionary: 178590
  Longest word:            15 letters
  Number of triplet-moves: 408

Initialization finished in 0.22ms

Board solved in 3.70ms:
  Number of candidates: 230
  Number of actual words: 163 

Words found:
  eek, eel, eely, eld, elhi, elk, ern, erupt, erupts, euro
  eye, eyer, ghi, ghis, glee, gley, glue, gluer, gluey, glut
  gluts, hip, hiply, hips, his, hist, kelp, kelps, kep, kepi
  kepis, keps, kept, kern, key, kye, lee, lek, lept, leu
  ley, lunt, lunts, lure, lush, lust, lustre, lye, nus, nut
  nuts, ore, ort, orts, ouph, ouphs, our, oust, out, outre
  outs, oyer, pee, per, pert, phi, phis, pis, pish, plus
  plush, ply, plyer, psi, pst, pul, pule, puler, pun, punt
  punts, pur, pure, puree, purely, pus, push, put, puts, ree
  rely, rep, reply, reps, roe, roue, roup, roups, roust, rout
  routs, rue, rule, ruly, run, runt, runts, rupee, rush, rust
  rut, ruts, ship, shlep, sip, sipe, spue, spun, spur, spurn
  spurt, strep, stroy, stun, stupe, sue, suer, sulk, sulker, sulky
  sun, sup, supe, super, sure, surely, tree, trek, trey, troupe
  troy, true, truly, tule, tun, tup, tups, turn, tush, ups
  urn, uts, yeld, yelk, yelp, yelps, yep, yeps, yore, you
  your, yourn, yous

对于在原始问题中作为示例发布的信件(FXIE…)

Precomputation finished in 239.68ms:
  Words in the dictionary: 178590
  Longest word:            15 letters
  Number of triplet-moves: 408

Initialization finished in 0.21ms

Board solved in 3.69ms:
  Number of candidates: 87
  Number of actual words: 76

Words found:
  amble, ambo, ami, amie, asea, awa, awe, awes, awl, axil
  axile, axle, boil, bole, box, but, buts, east, elm, emboli
  fame, fames, fax, lei, lie, lima, limb, limbo, limbs, lime
  limes, lob, lobs, lox, mae, maes, maw, maws, max, maxi
  mesa, mew, mewl, mews, mil, mile, milo, mix, oil, ole
  sae, saw, sea, seam, semi, sew, stub, swam, swami, tub
  tubs, tux, twa, twae, twaes, twas, uts, wae, waes, wamble
  wame, wames, was, wast, wax, west

对于以下5x5网格:

R P R I T
A H H L N
I E T E P
Z R Y S G
O G W E Y

它给出了这个:

Precomputation finished in 240.39ms:
  Words in the dictionary: 178590
  Longest word:            15 letters
  Number of triplet-moves: 768

Initialization finished in 0.23ms

Board solved in 3.85ms:
  Number of candidates: 331
  Number of actual words: 240

Words found:
  aero, aery, ahi, air, airt, airth, airts, airy, ear, egest
  elhi, elint, erg, ergo, ester, eth, ether, eye, eyen, eyer
  eyes, eyre, eyrie, gel, gelt, gelts, gen, gent, gentil, gest
  geste, get, gets, gey, gor, gore, gory, grey, greyest, greys
  gyre, gyri, gyro, hae, haet, haets, hair, hairy, hap, harp
  heap, hear, heh, heir, help, helps, hen, hent, hep, her
  hero, hes, hest, het, hetero, heth, hets, hey, hie, hilt
  hilts, hin, hint, hire, hit, inlet, inlets, ire, leg, leges
  legs, lehr, lent, les, lest, let, lethe, lets, ley, leys
  lin, line, lines, liney, lint, lit, neg, negs, nest, nester
  net, nether, nets, nil, nit, ogre, ore, orgy, ort, orts
  pah, pair, par, peg, pegs, peh, pelt, pelter, peltry, pelts
  pen, pent, pes, pest, pester, pesty, pet, peter, pets, phi
  philter, philtre, phiz, pht, print, pst, rah, rai, rap, raphe
  raphes, reap, rear, rei, ret, rete, rets, rhaphe, rhaphes, rhea
  ria, rile, riles, riley, rin, rye, ryes, seg, sel, sen
  sent, senti, set, sew, spelt, spelter, spent, splent, spline, splint
  split, stent, step, stey, stria, striae, sty, stye, tea, tear
  teg, tegs, tel, ten, tent, thae, the, their, then, these
  thesp, they, thin, thine, thir, thirl, til, tile, tiles, tilt
  tilter, tilth, tilts, tin, tine, tines, tirl, trey, treys, trog
  try, tye, tyer, tyes, tyre, tyro, west, wester, wry, wryest
  wye, wyes, wyte, wytes, yea, yeah, year, yeh, yelp, yelps
  yen, yep, yeps, yes, yester, yet, yew, yews, zero, zori

为此,我使用了TWL06锦标赛拼字词列表,因为原始问题中的链接不再有效。这个文件是1.85MB,所以略短一些。buildDictionary函数抛出所有小于3个字母的单词。

以下是对其性能的一些观察:

It's about 10 times slower than the reported performance of Victor Nicollet's OCaml implementation. Whether this is caused by the different algorithm, the shorter dictionary he used, the fact that his code is compiled and mine runs in a Java virtual machine, or the performance of our computers (mine is an Intel Q6600 @ 2.4MHz running WinXP), I don't know. But it's much faster than the results for the other implementations quoted at the end of the original question. So, whether this algorithm is superior to the trie dictionary or not, I don't know at this point. The table method used in checkWordTriplets() yields a very good approximation to the actual answers. Only 1 in 3-5 words passed by it will fail the checkWords() test (See number of candidates vs. number of actual words above). Something you can't see above: The checkWordTriplets() function takes about 3.65ms and is therefore fully dominant in the search process. The checkWords() function takes up pretty much the remaining 0.05-0.20 ms. The execution time of the checkWordTriplets() function depends linearly on the dictionary size and is virtually independent of board size! The execution time of checkWords() depends on the board size and the number of words not ruled out by checkWordTriplets(). The checkWords() implementation above is the dumbest first version I came up with. It is basically not optimized at all. But compared to checkWordTriplets() it is irrelevant for the total performance of the application, so I didn't worry about it. But, if the board size gets bigger, this function will get slower and slower and will eventually start to matter. Then, it would need to be optimized as well. One nice thing about this code is its flexibility: You can easily change the board size: Update line 10 and the String array passed to initializeBoard(). It can support larger/different alphabets and can handle things like treating 'Qu' as one letter without any performance overhead. To do this, one would need to update line 9 and the couple of places where characters are converted to numbers (currently simply by subtracting 65 from the ASCII value)

好吧,但我觉得现在这篇文章已经足够长了。我当然可以回答你可能有的任何问题,但让我们把它转移到评论。

我用c语言解决了这个问题。在我的机器上运行大约需要48毫秒(其中98%的时间花在从磁盘加载字典和创建trie上)。字典是/usr/share/dict/american-english,有62886个单词。

源代码

我知道我已经非常晚了,但是我之前用PHP做了一个——只是为了好玩……

http://www.lostsockdesign.com.au/sandbox/boggle/index.php?letters=fxieamloewbxastu 在0.90108秒内找到75个单词(133分)

F……X . .我 .............. E ............... 一个 ...................................... 米 .............................. L ............................ O ............................... E .................... W ............................ B .......................... X 一个 .................. 年代 .................................................. T ................. U…

给出了一些程序实际在做什么的指示-每个字母是它开始查看模式的地方,而每个'。这显示了中国试图走的一条道路。越多越好。“它搜索得越远。

如果你想要密码,请告诉我…这是一个可怕的PHP和HTML的混合体,从来没有想过要看到阳光,所以我不敢在这里张贴:P

对于字典加速,有一个通用的转换/过程可以大大减少提前的字典比较。

鉴于上面的网格只包含16个字符,其中一些字符是重复的,您可以通过简单地过滤掉具有不可获取字符的条目来大大减少字典中的总键数。

我认为这是明显的优化,但看到没有人这么做,我就提出来了。

在输入过程中,它将我的字典从20万个键减少到只有2000个键。这至少减少了内存开销,并且这肯定会映射到某个地方的速度增加,因为内存不是无限快的。

Perl实现

我的实现有点头重脚轻,因为我重视能够知道每个提取的字符串的确切路径,而不仅仅是其中的有效性。

我也有一些适应在那里,理论上允许一个网格中有洞的功能,网格有不同大小的线(假设你得到了正确的输入,它以某种方式对齐)。

早期筛选器是我的应用程序中最重要的瓶颈,正如之前怀疑的那样,注释掉了一行从1.5s膨胀到7.5s的代码。

在执行时,它似乎认为所有的个位数都在他们自己的有效单词上,但我很确定这是由于字典文件的工作方式。

它有点臃肿,但至少我重用了cpan中的Tree::Trie

其中有些部分是受到现有实现的启发,有些是我已经想到的。

建设性的批评和改进的方法欢迎(/我注意到他从来没有在CPAN上搜索过一个拼字游戏解决器,但这更有趣)

新标准更新

#!/usr/bin/perl 

use strict;
use warnings;

{

  # this package manages a given path through the grid.
  # Its an array of matrix-nodes in-order with
  # Convenience functions for pretty-printing the paths
  # and for extending paths as new paths.

  # Usage:
  # my $p = Prefix->new(path=>[ $startnode ]);
  # my $c = $p->child( $extensionNode );
  # print $c->current_word ;

  package Prefix;
  use Moose;

  has path => (
      isa     => 'ArrayRef[MatrixNode]',
      is      => 'rw',
      default => sub { [] },
  );
  has current_word => (
      isa        => 'Str',
      is         => 'rw',
      lazy_build => 1,
  );

  # Create a clone of this object
  # with a longer path

  # $o->child( $successive-node-on-graph );

  sub child {
      my $self    = shift;
      my $newNode = shift;
      my $f       = Prefix->new();

      # Have to do this manually or other recorded paths get modified
      push @{ $f->{path} }, @{ $self->{path} }, $newNode;
      return $f;
  }

  # Traverses $o->path left-to-right to get the string it represents.

  sub _build_current_word {
      my $self = shift;
      return join q{}, map { $_->{value} } @{ $self->{path} };
  }

  # Returns  the rightmost node on this path

  sub tail {
      my $self = shift;
      return $self->{path}->[-1];
  }

  # pretty-format $o->path

  sub pp_path {
      my $self = shift;
      my @path =
        map { '[' . $_->{x_position} . ',' . $_->{y_position} . ']' }
        @{ $self->{path} };
      return "[" . join( ",", @path ) . "]";
  }

  # pretty-format $o
  sub pp {
      my $self = shift;
      return $self->current_word . ' => ' . $self->pp_path;
  }

  __PACKAGE__->meta->make_immutable;
}

{

  # Basic package for tracking node data
  # without having to look on the grid.
  # I could have just used an array or a hash, but that got ugly.

# Once the matrix is up and running it doesn't really care so much about rows/columns,
# Its just a sea of points and each point has adjacent points.
# Relative positioning is only really useful to map it back to userspace

  package MatrixNode;
  use Moose;

  has x_position => ( isa => 'Int', is => 'rw', required => 1 );
  has y_position => ( isa => 'Int', is => 'rw', required => 1 );
  has value      => ( isa => 'Str', is => 'rw', required => 1 );
  has siblings   => (
      isa     => 'ArrayRef[MatrixNode]',
      is      => 'rw',
      default => sub { [] }
  );

# Its not implicitly uni-directional joins. It would be more effient in therory
# to make the link go both ways at the same time, but thats too hard to program around.
# and besides, this isn't slow enough to bother caring about.

  sub add_sibling {
      my $self    = shift;
      my $sibling = shift;
      push @{ $self->siblings }, $sibling;
  }

  # Convenience method to derive a path starting at this node

  sub to_path {
      my $self = shift;
      return Prefix->new( path => [$self] );
  }
  __PACKAGE__->meta->make_immutable;

}

{

  package Matrix;
  use Moose;

  has rows => (
      isa     => 'ArrayRef',
      is      => 'rw',
      default => sub { [] },
  );

  has regex => (
      isa        => 'Regexp',
      is         => 'rw',
      lazy_build => 1,
  );

  has cells => (
      isa        => 'ArrayRef',
      is         => 'rw',
      lazy_build => 1,
  );

  sub add_row {
      my $self = shift;
      push @{ $self->rows }, [@_];
  }

  # Most of these functions from here down are just builder functions,
  # or utilities to help build things.
  # Some just broken out to make it easier for me to process.
  # All thats really useful is add_row
  # The rest will generally be computed, stored, and ready to go
  # from ->cells by the time either ->cells or ->regex are called.

  # traverse all cells and make a regex that covers them.
  sub _build_regex {
      my $self  = shift;
      my $chars = q{};
      for my $cell ( @{ $self->cells } ) {
          $chars .= $cell->value();
      }
      $chars = "[^$chars]";
      return qr/$chars/i;
  }

  # convert a plain cell ( ie: [x][y] = 0 )
  # to an intelligent cell ie: [x][y] = object( x, y )
  # we only really keep them in this format temporarily
  # so we can go through and tie in neighbouring information.
  # after the neigbouring is done, the grid should be considered inoperative.

  sub _convert {
      my $self = shift;
      my $x    = shift;
      my $y    = shift;
      my $v    = $self->_read( $x, $y );
      my $n    = MatrixNode->new(
          x_position => $x,
          y_position => $y,
          value      => $v,
      );
      $self->_write( $x, $y, $n );
      return $n;
  }

# go through the rows/collums presently available and freeze them into objects.

  sub _build_cells {
      my $self = shift;
      my @out  = ();
      my @rows = @{ $self->{rows} };
      for my $x ( 0 .. $#rows ) {
          next unless defined $self->{rows}->[$x];
          my @col = @{ $self->{rows}->[$x] };
          for my $y ( 0 .. $#col ) {
              next unless defined $self->{rows}->[$x]->[$y];
              push @out, $self->_convert( $x, $y );
          }
      }
      for my $c (@out) {
          for my $n ( $self->_neighbours( $c->x_position, $c->y_position ) ) {
              $c->add_sibling( $self->{rows}->[ $n->[0] ]->[ $n->[1] ] );
          }
      }
      return \@out;
  }

  # given x,y , return array of points that refer to valid neighbours.
  sub _neighbours {
      my $self = shift;
      my $x    = shift;
      my $y    = shift;
      my @out  = ();
      for my $sx ( -1, 0, 1 ) {
          next if $sx + $x < 0;
          next if not defined $self->{rows}->[ $sx + $x ];
          for my $sy ( -1, 0, 1 ) {
              next if $sx == 0 && $sy == 0;
              next if $sy + $y < 0;
              next if not defined $self->{rows}->[ $sx + $x ]->[ $sy + $y ];
              push @out, [ $sx + $x, $sy + $y ];
          }
      }
      return @out;
  }

  sub _has_row {
      my $self = shift;
      my $x    = shift;
      return defined $self->{rows}->[$x];
  }

  sub _has_cell {
      my $self = shift;
      my $x    = shift;
      my $y    = shift;
      return defined $self->{rows}->[$x]->[$y];
  }

  sub _read {
      my $self = shift;
      my $x    = shift;
      my $y    = shift;
      return $self->{rows}->[$x]->[$y];
  }

  sub _write {
      my $self = shift;
      my $x    = shift;
      my $y    = shift;
      my $v    = shift;
      $self->{rows}->[$x]->[$y] = $v;
      return $v;
  }

  __PACKAGE__->meta->make_immutable;
}

use Tree::Trie;

sub readDict {
  my $fn = shift;
  my $re = shift;
  my $d  = Tree::Trie->new();

  # Dictionary Loading
  open my $fh, '<', $fn;
  while ( my $line = <$fh> ) {
      chomp($line);

 # Commenting the next line makes it go from 1.5 seconds to 7.5 seconds. EPIC.
      next if $line =~ $re;    # Early Filter
      $d->add( uc($line) );
  }
  return $d;
}

sub traverseGraph {
  my $d     = shift;
  my $m     = shift;
  my $min   = shift;
  my $max   = shift;
  my @words = ();

  # Inject all grid nodes into the processing queue.

  my @queue =
    grep { $d->lookup( $_->current_word ) }
    map  { $_->to_path } @{ $m->cells };

  while (@queue) {
      my $item = shift @queue;

      # put the dictionary into "exact match" mode.

      $d->deepsearch('exact');

      my $cword = $item->current_word;
      my $l     = length($cword);

      if ( $l >= $min && $d->lookup($cword) ) {
          push @words,
            $item;    # push current path into "words" if it exactly matches.
      }
      next if $l > $max;

      # put the dictionary into "is-a-prefix" mode.
      $d->deepsearch('boolean');

    siblingloop: foreach my $sibling ( @{ $item->tail->siblings } ) {
          foreach my $visited ( @{ $item->{path} } ) {
              next siblingloop if $sibling == $visited;
          }

          # given path y , iterate for all its end points
          my $subpath = $item->child($sibling);

          # create a new path for each end-point
          if ( $d->lookup( $subpath->current_word ) ) {

             # if the new path is a prefix, add it to the bottom of the queue.
              push @queue, $subpath;
          }
      }
  }
  return \@words;
}

sub setup_predetermined { 
  my $m = shift; 
  my $gameNo = shift;
  if( $gameNo == 0 ){
      $m->add_row(qw( F X I E ));
      $m->add_row(qw( A M L O ));
      $m->add_row(qw( E W B X ));
      $m->add_row(qw( A S T U ));
      return $m;
  }
  if( $gameNo == 1 ){
      $m->add_row(qw( D G H I ));
      $m->add_row(qw( K L P S ));
      $m->add_row(qw( Y E U T ));
      $m->add_row(qw( E O R N ));
      return $m;
  }
}
sub setup_random { 
  my $m = shift; 
  my $seed = shift;
  srand $seed;
  my @letters = 'A' .. 'Z' ; 
  for( 1 .. 4 ){ 
      my @r = ();
      for( 1 .. 4 ){
          push @r , $letters[int(rand(25))];
      }
      $m->add_row( @r );
  }
}

# Here is where the real work starts.

my $m = Matrix->new();
setup_predetermined( $m, 0 );
#setup_random( $m, 5 );

my $d = readDict( 'dict.txt', $m->regex );
my $c = scalar @{ $m->cells };    # get the max, as per spec

print join ",\n", map { $_->pp } @{
  traverseGraph( $d, $m, 3, $c ) ;
};

Arch/执行信息进行比较:

model name      : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     T9300  @ 2.50GHz
cache size      : 6144 KB
Memory usage summary: heap total: 77057577, heap peak: 11446200, stack peak: 26448
       total calls   total memory   failed calls
 malloc|     947212       68763684              0
realloc|      11191        1045641              0  (nomove:9063, dec:4731, free:0)
 calloc|     121001        7248252              0
   free|     973159       65854762

Histogram for block sizes:
  0-15         392633  36% ==================================================
 16-31          43530   4% =====
 32-47          50048   4% ======
 48-63          70701   6% =========
 64-79          18831   1% ==
 80-95          19271   1% ==
 96-111        238398  22% ==============================
112-127          3007  <1% 
128-143        236727  21% ==============================

关于正则表达式优化的更多嘟囔

我使用的正则表达式优化对于多解字典是无用的,而对于多解字典,您将需要一个完整的字典,而不是一个预先修整过的字典。

然而,也就是说,对于一次性解决,它真的很快。(Perl正则表达式是在C!:))

以下是一些不同的代码添加:

sub readDict_nofilter {
  my $fn = shift;
  my $re = shift;
  my $d  = Tree::Trie->new();

  # Dictionary Loading
  open my $fh, '<', $fn;
  while ( my $line = <$fh> ) {
      chomp($line);
      $d->add( uc($line) );
  }
  return $d;
}

sub benchmark_io { 
  use Benchmark qw( cmpthese :hireswallclock );
   # generate a random 16 character string 
   # to simulate there being an input grid. 
  my $regexen = sub { 
      my @letters = 'A' .. 'Z' ; 
      my @lo = ();
      for( 1..16 ){ 
          push @lo , $_ ; 
      }
      my $c  = join '', @lo;
      $c = "[^$c]";
      return qr/$c/i;
  };
  cmpthese( 200 , { 
      filtered => sub { 
          readDict('dict.txt', $regexen->() );
      }, 
      unfiltered => sub {
          readDict_nofilter('dict.txt');
      }
  });
}
           s/iter unfiltered   filtered
unfiltered   8.16         --       -94%
filtered    0.464      1658%         --

Ps: 8.16 * 200 = 27分钟。

如何简单的排序和使用字典中的二进制搜索?

在0.35秒内返回整个列表,并可以进一步优化(例如删除含有未使用字母的单词等)。

from bisect import bisect_left

f = open("dict.txt")
D.extend([line.strip() for line in f.readlines()])
D = sorted(D)

def neibs(M,x,y):
    n = len(M)
    for i in xrange(-1,2):
        for j in xrange(-1,2):
            if (i == 0 and j == 0) or (x + i < 0 or x + i >= n or y + j < 0 or y + j >= n):
                continue
            yield (x + i, y + j)

def findWords(M,D,x,y,prefix):
    prefix = prefix + M[x][y]

    # find word in dict by binary search
    found = bisect_left(D,prefix)

    # if found then yield
    if D[found] == prefix: 
        yield prefix

    # if what we found is not even a prefix then return
    # (there is no point in going further)
    if len(D[found]) < len(prefix) or D[found][:len(prefix)] != prefix:
        return

    # recourse
    for neib in neibs(M,x,y):
        for word in findWords(M,D,neib[0], neib[1], prefix):
            yield word

def solve(M,D):
    # check each starting point
    for x in xrange(0,len(M)):
        for y in xrange(0,len(M)):
            for word in findWords(M,D,x,y,""):
                yield word

grid = "fxie amlo ewbx astu".split()
print [x for x in solve(grid,D)]