Games, Part 3: Minim

The game this time is Minim, and you can find it on multiple sites all over the net. Two sites I tried are Kongregate and Play181.

This game starts out being very easy. It gets a little harder as you work your way through the levels. I didn't have any trouble until I got to level 16 and then I came to a halt. I pointed and clicked and clicked and pointed, but no matter what I did I wasn't able to come up with a solution. I don't know if it is really that difficult, or my brain was just mush. In any case I decided to write a computer program to solve it. The program gave me almost as much trouble as the game. I probably spent 8 to 10 hours working on it over a period of about five days. I finally got it working. It took the program a thousand trial steps to come up with a solution. The solution itself is only about ten steps long, and some of them are superfluous. The program isn't designed to find the best solution, just a solution.

I posted the code on Google Docs.

Update: I wrote up a simple description of the game and my program and posted it on Google Docs as well.

Update 2: The solution generated by my program:

Program to solve minim puzzle.
Depth
0: -2 6 = 9 +2 4 *2 = 9 4

Depth
986: -2 9 = 6 +2 4 *2 = 9 4
987: 7 = 6 +2 4 *2 = 9 4
988: 6 = 7 +2 4 *2 = 9 4
991: 6 = 7 6 *2 = 9 4
992: 7 = 6 6 *2 = 9 4
994: 7 = 7 *2 = 9 4
995: 8 *2 = 9 4
999: 8 9 = *2 4
1002: 8 9 = 8
1003: 8 8 = 9
1004: 9 = 9
1005: 10
Duplicates: 547
Dead Ends: 288
Done.

As you can see steps 2 and 4 are superfluous. It is just an artifact of the order the program tries various moves.