Solving the Battleship Solitaire puzzle as an integer programming problem

The bachelor thesis deals with the Battleship Solitaire puzzle. It introduces the history and the rules of this puzzle, which are thereafter used to formulate the puzzle as an integer programming problem. Two mathematical models based on different approaches are created, a cell-based model and a ship-based model. In order to determine whether a puzzle has a unique solution an objective function is added to each model. Both models are developed in LINGO modeling language and tested with different grid sizes. The test results show that even though the ship-based model uses fewer variables and constraints, it is too demanding in terms of data processing. It results in longer solving times and the model fails to find a solution for larger grids. Solving the problem using the cell-based model is significantly faster. The solution was found even for larger grids, though the solving time was very long