Water color puzzle solver

A Python script to solve the "Water color puzzle".

It takes two input:

• a list of colors in bottles, from top (the available one) to bottom
• a number of empty bottles

And it provides a list of moves to solve the problem.

How to run

Clone this repository and run:

python main.py

or:

uv run main.py

An example

The puzzle setup is 6 bottles, 4 with 4 colors and 2 empty:

bottle 1	bottle 2	bottle 3	bottle 4
yellow	red	yellow	green
green	red	yellow	yellow
green	blue	green	red
red	blue	blue	blue

(a vertical row is a bottle from top to bottom)

Then your input for the script will be:

yellow,green,green,red
red,red,blue,blue
yellow,yellow,green,blue
green,yellow,red,blue
(empty line)
2

The solution will be:

4->6(1green) - 1->4(1yellow) - 1->6(2green) - 2->1(2red) - 4->5(2yellow) - 3->5(2yellow) - 3->6(1green) - 2->3(2blue) - 4->1(1red) - 3->4(3blue)

So move:

• 1 green from the 4nd bottle to the 6th bottle
• 1 yellow from the 1st bottle to the 4th bottle
• 2 green from the 1st bottle to the 6th bottle
• 2 red from the 2nd bottle to the 1st bottle
• 2 yellow from the 4nd bottle to the 5nd bottle
• 2 yellow from the 3rd bottle to the 5nd bottle
• 1 green from the 3rd bottle to the 6th bottle
• 2 blue from the 2nd bottle to the 3rd bottle
• 1 red from the 4nd bottle to the 1st bottle
• 3 blue from the 3rd bottle to the 4nd bottle

The problem is solved.