Determining solvability in the birds of a feather card game

Abstract

Birds of a Feather is a single-player card game in which cards are arranged in a grid. The player attempts to combine stacks of cards under certain rules, with the goal being to combine all cards into a single stack. This paper highlights several approaches for efficiently classifying whether a randomly-chosen state has a single-stack solution. These approaches use graph theory and machine learning concepts to prune a state's search space, resulting in significant reductions in runtime relative to a baseline search.