I have played the Nonograms app on my iphone for quite some time. After my final exams one semester, I found there was an online version (which probably predated the iphone app), at https://www.puzzle-nonograms.com/, and decided to find a way to automate the puzzles. If you are concerned that I am cheating, don't worry, there is a robot mode that is activated when a hidden input's value is set to true. When this is active, all times are sent to the 'ROBOTS hall of fame.'
- Selenium: Uses Selenium for web automation and to interact with the puzzles on the website.
- Algorithm: Implements an algorithm to solve nonogram puzzles.
- Python 3
- Selenium
- ChromeDriver
- Find the latest ChromeDrivers here
- NumPy
- Potentially other dependecies
The algorithm I developed to solve the nonogram puzzles (calculate_options, fill_cells, remove_options in utils.py) was inspired by Hennie de Harder through this article. The article also gives an overview on how the puzzle is formatted, if that is something you need to see.
Hennie explains there are three general steps in the process.
- Calculate every option each row and column could be filled according to their corresponding clues.
- Fill the cells that you know must be filled (the intersection of all the options for that row / column)
- Remove options based on step 2
In step 2, I also 'unfilled' (put an X) cells I knew must be unfilled (the cell doesn't appear in the union of all the options for that row / column). I solved the puzzle using a NumPy array. After solving the puzzle, I use Selenium to access the cell elements on the website and click the cells that should be filled. Visually, the puzzle will always appear to be solved top to bottom. An optimization that could be implemented is to fill the cells as the puzzle is being solved (though I don't think it would do much).
Currently, I don't plan on adding more to this program... but who knows.
To use the program, go to the nonograms website linked above.
- Find a puzzle you want to solve
- Press the 'Share' button under the puzzle
- Copy the 'Progress Permalink', you'll need this permalink when prompted by the command line for setup questions. Now, run
python3 nonogram_solver.py
The program prompts the user for the following information:
- Permalink of the chosen puzzle
- Whether the puzzle is a special puzzle
- Whether to solve the given puzzle or find a new one (resetting the timer)
- Number of puzzles to solve in a row
If the puzzle is a special puzzle, the last two questions are defaulted to 'no' and '1' respectively since speical puzzles don't have a 'New Puzzle' button.
Alternatively, if you have the 'Nonograms Puzzle ID' and the size, you can check the cache to see if you've solved the puzzle before by running
python3 nonogram_solver.py <id> <size_key>
The 'id' can be with commas or without. The 'size_key' is defined as follows: 0 for 5x5, 1 for 10x10, 2 for 15x15, 3 for 20x20, 4 for 25x25. This is more for fun; running the program like this will forfeit your opportunity to submit the time to the (robots) hall of fame. The program automatically checks all puzzles if they've been cached (solved before), even if the program is not ran like this. Of course, it is unlikely to randomly get a puzzle you've seen before.
Note: the special puzzles do not have a puzzle id, so the program only caches the regular puzzles.