Lights Out Solver
Contents
Introduction
On this page you will find Darkness, a solver for the electronic puzzle game Lights Out. Given a valid puzzle, Darkness will find the minimal number of lights to press in order to turn them all off.
Screenshots
The following picture shows a puzzle entered into Darkness. The white squares represent lights that are on and the black squares represent lights that are off. Squares with a green circle in them are ones you should press (in any order) to solve your puzzle.
Binaries and Source Code
Darkness was created using C++ and MinGW. The source code comes with the binary and is licensed under the MIT license.
Links
- Flash Clone - It was this clone that inspired me to write a solver for Lights Out.
- Kenneth Wilder's Lights Out Page - This page includes a useful PDF file that explains how to find the minimal winning strategy for a Lights Out configuration.
- Jaap's Puzzle Page - Includes information on how to solve Lights Out and a JavaScript clone. There's also an interesting statement on this page that says "There is no position that needs more than 15 button presses to solve."