For decades, efforts in solving games had been exclusive to solving two-player games (i.e., board games like checkers, chess-like games, etc.), where the game outcome can be correctly and efficiently predicted by applying some artificial intelligence (AI) search technique and collecting a massive amount of gameplay statistics. However, such a method and technique cannot be applied directly to the puzzle-solving domain since puzzles are generally played alone (single-player) and have unique characteristics (such as stochastic or hidden information). So then, a question arose as to how the AI technique can retain its performance for solving two-player games but instead applied to a single-agent puzzle?

For years, puzzles and games had been regarded as interchangeable or one part of the other. In truth, this may not be the case all the time. Looking from a real-world perspective, ‘game’ is something we face every day; dealing with the unknown. For instance, the unknown of making the right decision (i.e., getting married) or the wrong one (i.e., quitting a job) or not making one at all (i.e., regrets on ‘what if’). Meanwhile, ‘puzzle’ is something that was known to be there, and even something is hidden yet to be uncovered. Such a known case, for instance, would be the discovery of ‘wonder’ material like graphene and its many potentials that are yet to be commercialized and widely used. Then again, how and what border between ‘puzzle’ and ‘game’ in a puzzle-solving context?

At the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), Japan, Professor Hiroyuki Iida, and colleagues attempted to answer these two questions in their latest study published in the journal Knowledge-based Systems. The research study focuses on two important contributions: (1) defining the solvability of a puzzle in a single-agent game context via Minesweeper testbed and (2) proposing a new artificial intelligence (AI) agent using the unified composition of four strategies called PAFG solver. Taking advantage of the known information and unknown information of the Minesweeper puzzle, the proposed solver had achieved better performance in solving the puzzle comparable to the state-of-the-art studies.