Holger von Jouanne-Diedrich solves a classic puzzle:
The following puzzle is a well-known meme in social networks. It is said to have been invented by young Einstein and back in the days I was ambitious enough to solve it by hand (you should try too!).
Yet, even simpler is to use Constraint Programming (CP). An excellent choice for doing that is MiniZinc, a free and open-source constraint modelling language. And the best thing is that you can control it by R! If you want to see how, read on!
I’d solved it once by hand as well, but here we get to see a much easier route. Constraint-based programming is one of those things which doesn’t show up very often in the business world, but I think part of the reason is that most programming languages lack the capacity to implement constraints really well. It could also be that people are usually pretty mushy about laying out proper constraints.