Jump to content

Warnsdorff's algorithm

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 71.139.180.188 (talk) at 20:42, 3 June 2008 (→External links). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Warnsdorff's algorithm is a heuristic method for solving the Knight's Tour. The algorithm was first described in "Des Rösselsprungs einfachste und allgemeinste Lösung" by H. C. Warnsdorff in 1823.

  • Warnsdorff's rule
  • Pohl, Ira (July 1967). "A method for finding Hamilton paths and Knight's tours". Communications of the ACM. 10 (7): 446–449.
  • Preprint of Pohl's paper (freely accessible)

A heuristic is a rule of thumb. Warnsdorf's rule was go to a next square that had the fewest further knight's moves. This more generally can be applied to any graph - as going to a next node that has least degree. Pohl generalized this by breaking ties at a next level. This led to a very powerful and linear time algorithm for finding Hamiltonian's in a graph. The knight's tour is a special case.

Stub icon

This combinatorics-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Warnsdorff%27s_algorithm&oldid=216921637"