NQueens
This project is an attempt to find the results of the NQueen problem using a BOINC framework for board sizes starting from N=19.
The original problem was trying to find a way to place eight queens on a chessboard so that no queen would attack any other queen. An alternate way of expressing the problem is to place eight anythings on an eight by eight grid such that none of them share a common row, column, or diagonal.
It has long been known that there are 92 solutions to the problem. Of these 92, there are 12 distinct patterns. All of the 92 solutions can be transformed into one of these 12 unique patterns using rotations and reflections.
If we increase the size of the chessboard beyond 8 rows/columns, we might want to find how many solutions exist for any arbitrary board size N. For example, if N = 10, then there are 724 solutions. Of these, 92 are distinct.
The eight queens puzzle is an example of the more general n queens puzzle of placing n queens on an n × n chessboard (n ≥ 4).
Who is involved?
The NQueens Project is run by the Universidad de Concepción, Chile.