Hi to all,

The puzzle site Enigmatika presents a series of optimization contests. There had been two tasks earlier. The first task was about path planning from points A to B inside a rectangular grid while trying to collect as many as points. The second task had a New Year theme and it is about placing the pentominoes inside a Christmas Tree shaped grid. Although the solving time for both tasks has ended you may try to solve them and search for any possible over max solutions.

The next optimization contest will be held between 07.02 - 17.02. And this time the theme is Valentine's Day. It is an Arukone type optimization and here comes a small description of this task (of course with the translation result from Serbian to English):

TASK: Red and blue boxes marked with the letters A to E are separated couples. Your task is to connect them up to Valentine's Day (to connect the fields with the same letters), and she can pick up a 'flower' (orange field) or 'gift' (grey field). Motion path should be marked as needed, and the paths should not be overlap, intersect or touch, except diagonally.

SCORING: Each connected pair made 50 points, and distance traveled for each unpainted box takes up a point. 'Flower' (orange box) is worth 5, a 'gift' (grey box) 10 points. Should be connected to as many pairs and collect as many points.

I thought that some optimization lovers may be interested in these tasks also. You may find some details about the next task and also previous tasks on the site http://enigmatika.webs.com/takmicenja.htm (takmicenja means competitions)

And here is the link to the pdf file with Serbian instructions. It may be also helpful to understand the task since it has an example:

http://www.box.net/shared/szivzvnftu

Best regards,

Zafer