Student Originated Software 1997-1998
Fall Quarter

A Software Engineering Course at
The Evergreen State College

Eight Queens Problem

The eight-queens problem is to place eight queens on a chessboard so that no queen is attacking any other queen. The chessboard is 8x8 squares. A queen can move an unbounded number of squares: horizontally, vertically, or diagnoally. There are several approaches one can take.
  1. You can try a random brute force method. I.e. randomly attempt to place queens on the board and then evaluate if the resulting board meets the above criteria.

  2. You can use an exhaustive brute force approach that sytematically produces each possible configuration of queens and then evalates if the resulting boards meet the above criteria.

  3. You can attempt to produce a heuristic that will help you zone in on a solution more directly. Some positions on the board are more likely to eliminate more possibilites. For instance if a queen is placed at board position (row=1, column=5), then no other queen may be placed in row 1 or column 5, eliminating 7 possibilities in each row and column. But the associated diagonal only eliminates 3 squares. On the other hand, if a queen is placed in row=1 and column=1, then the full diagonal is eliminated.


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Created by: SoSwEbGrOuP
E-mail: ringert@evergreen.edu