The knight’s tour puzzle is played on a chess board with a single chess piece, the knight. The object of the puzzle is to find a sequence of moves that allow the knight to visit every square on the board exactly once. One such sequence is called a “tour.” The knight’s tour puzzle has fascinated chess players, mathematicians and computer scientists alike for many years. The upper bound on the number of possible legal tours for an eight-by-eight chessboard is known to be 1.305×10351.305×1035; however, there are even more possible dead ends. Clearly this is a problem that requires some real brains, some real computing power, or both.

Although researchers have studied many different algorithms to solve the knight’s tour problem, a graph search is one of the easiest to understand and program. Once again we will solve the problem using two main steps:

Represent the legal moves of a knight on a chessboard as a graph.
Use a graph algorithm to find a path of length rows×columns−1rows×columns−1 where every vertex on the graph is visited exactly once.
解题代码:

""" knight tour problem """
from pythonds.graphs import Graph


class KnightProblem(object):
    """ solution class bd_size: 方阵棋盘的边长(以格数计数) step: knight的步伐(移动方式) """

    def __init__(self, bd_size):
        self.bd_size_ = bd_size
        self.knight_graph_ = Graph()
        self.step_ = [(-2, -1), (-2, 1),
                      (-1, -2), (-1, 2),
                      (1, -2), (1, 2),
                      (2, -1), (2, 1)]

    def build_knight_graph(self):
        """ 构建 knight graph """
        for row in range(self.bd_size_):
            for col in range(self.bd_size_):
                current_id = self.gener_node_id(row, col)
                for nid in self.get_next_nodes(row, col):
                    self.knight_graph_.addEdge(current_id, nid)

    def gener_node_id(self, row, col):
        """ 根据当前所在行、列生成该结点的序号 算法：序号 = row * bd_size + col """
        return row * self.bd_size_ + col

    def get_next_nodes(self, row, col):
        """ 获取从当前所在结点的下一个合法移动所到达的结点 """
        next_nodes = []
        for move in self.step_:
            new_row = row + move[0]
            new_col = col + move[1]
            if self.is_legal_node(new_row, new_col):
                nid = self.gener_node_id(new_row, new_col)
                next_nodes.append(nid)
        return next_nodes

    def is_legal_node(self, row, col):
        """ 判断此结点是不是一个合法结点 算法：row/col > 0 and < bd_size """
        if row < 0 or row > self.bd_size_:
            return False
        elif col < 0 or col > self.bd_size_:
            return False
        else:
            return True

    def dfs(self, current_vertex, vertex_path, current_depth=0):
        """ 深度优先搜索 recursion """
        current_vertex.setColor('gray')
        vertex_path.append(current_vertex)

        # base case
        if current_depth < self.bd_size_ * self.bd_size_ - 1:
            done = False
            # 获取当前结点的所有相邻结点
            i = 0
            # 常规解法,不采取启发式优化,找出遍历8*8规格的棋盘,
            #一般笔记本可能需要半小时
            # nbrs = list(current_vertex.getConnections())
            # 采用启发式优化,则在1s内完成
            nbrs = self.order_by_avail(current_vertex)
            while not done and i < len(nbrs):
                if nbrs[i].getColor() == 'white':
                    done = self.dfs(nbrs[i], vertex_path, current_depth + 1)
                i += 1
            if not done:  # perparing to trace back
                vertex_path.pop()
                current_vertex.setColor('white')
        else:
            done = True
        return done

    def order_by_avail(self, current_vertex):
        """ 启发式优化 根据各邻近结点的未访问子节点数 n_avail 对当前结点的邻近结点进行ascending排序 """
        res_list = []
        # nbr为当前结点的邻近结点
        for nbr in current_vertex.getConnections():
            if nbr.getColor() == 'white':
                c = 0
                for n in nbr.getConnections():
                    if n.getColor() == 'white':
                        c += 1
                res_list.append((nbr, c))
        res_list.sort(key=lambda x:x[1])
        return [y[0] for y in res_list]


if __name__ == '__main__':
    kf_graph = KnightProblem(8)
    kf_graph.build_knight_graph()
    path = []
    print(kf_graph.dfs(kf_graph.knight_graph_.getVertex(0), path))
    print(path)

启发式优化的思想是:让knight一开始尽量绕着棋盘的边缘游走。
因为棋盘边缘的可走路径少（2或3），而棋盘中间可走路径多（8），因此能先遍历边缘结点，使迭代次数减少。到了knight游走后期，虽然knight不得不走到棋盘中间，但因为边缘的结点已被遍历过（游戏规则是一个结点只能遍历一次），此时即使在棋盘中间，可走的路径也大大减少了。通过人类的智慧，启发式方法的达到了极其优化的效果。