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Solving the local optima problem – NQueens

Solving the local optima problem – NQueens

3 comments

·May 16, 2025
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cchianel

N-Queens can be solved (find a single valid solution) in polynomial time [1]. That being said, Local Search is a powerful technique that can solve a lot of problems such as employee scheduling, vehicle routing, or maintenance scheduling. You might want to take a look at Timefold [2], which is a local search solver that can be configured to use simulated annealing, tabu search, late acceptance and other local search algorithms. Note: I work for Timefold.

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/13109557

[2] https://solver.timefold.ai/

ColinWright

A follow-up to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43995152

andreareina

It's interesting to see n queens being framed as susceptible to getting stuck in local optima as my mind immediately goes to tree search.