CCO '96 P6 - Hoppers
View as PDFCanadian Computing Competition: 1996 Stage 2, Day 2, Problem 3
Hoppers are people on a jump stick who can jump from one square to the other, without touching the squares in between (a bit like a knight in chess). They can pick up speed and make bigger hops, but their acceleration per move is limited, and they also have a maximum speed. The game of Hoppers is played on a rectangular grid, where each square on the grid is either empty or occupied. While hoppers can fly over any square, they can only land on empty squares. At any point in time, a hopper has a velocity , where 
 and 
 are the speed (in squares) parallel to the grid. Thus, a speed of 
 corresponds to a knight jump, (as does 
 and 
 other speeds).
To determine the hops a hopper can make, we need to know how much speed a hopper can pick up or lose: either , 
, or 
 square in either or both directions. Thus, while having speed 
, the hopper can change to speeds 
 and 
. It is impossible for the hopper to obtain a velocity of 
 in either direction, so the 
 and 
 component will stay between 
 and 
 inclusive.
The goal of Hoppers is to get from start to finish as quickly as possible (i.e. in the least number of hops), without landing on occupied squares. You are to write a program which, given a rectangular grid, a start point S, and a finish point F, determines the least number of hops in which you can get from S to F. A hopper starts with initial speed  and does not care about the speed when arriving at 
F.
Input Specification
The first line contains the number of test cases  your program has to process. Each test case consists of a first line containing the width 
 (
) and height 
 (
) of the grid. Next is a line containing four integers separated by blanks, of which the first two indicate the start point 
 and the last two indicate the end point 
, where the start and end point are valid points on the grid (that is, 
, 
, 
, and 
). The third line of each test case contains an integer 
 indicating the number of obstacles in the grid. Finally, the test case consists of 
 lines, each specifying an obstacle. Each obstacle consists of four integers: 
, (
), meaning that all squares 
 with 
 and 
 are occupied. Neither the start point nor the finish point will ever be occupied.
Output Specification
The string No solution. if there is no way the hopper can reach the finish point from the start point without hopping on an occupied square. Otherwise, the text Optimal solution takes N hops., where  is the number of hops needed to get from start to finish point.
Sample Input
2
5 5
4 0 4 4
1
1 4 2 3
3 3
0 0 2 2
2
1 1 0 2
0 2 1 1
Sample Output
Optimal solution takes 7 hops.
No solution.
Explanation Of Sample
The example input can be illustrated as follows. Let # denote an occupied square, S denote the start point, F denote the finish point, and * denote the boundary of the grid. Then the sample input can also be given as follows.
2
5 5
*******
*    F*
* ####*
* ####*
*     *
*    S*
*******
3 3
*****
* #F*
*###*
*S# *
*****
Comments
is the drawing for the first test cases incorrect?