CHECKING LIFE-AND-DEATH PROBLEMS IN GO I: THE PROGRAM SCANLD¹

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Wolf, Thomas² | Shen, Lei³

Affiliations: St. Catharines, Canada

Note: [1] This article is a revised version of a contribution with the same title to the Computer Games Workshop 2007 held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 15-17, 2007. The revised version has been subjected to the Journal’s normal refereeing procedure.

Note: [2] Department of Mathematics, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. Email: [email protected]

Note: [3] Email: [email protected]

Abstract: In this article we introduce the program SCANLD (built on GOTOOLS) which checks solutions of life-and-death problems for correctness. It is a task for which computer programs are especially useful. They do the computations, they also do the handling of data in checking all moves of all solutions for optimality, and they report any errors that occur. Their refutation and their correction would be tedious and error prone if done with a computer, but interactively. After discussing the different types of checks that are performed and giving some statistics resulting from checking a 500-problem tsume-go book, some examples are given. A detailed list of mistakes that have been found is given in an on-line addendum to the article.

DOI: 10.3233/ICG-2007-30202

Journal: ICGA Journal, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 67-74, 2007