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Some puzzles have more than 1 valid solution, but with all being equally correct. In this Meta question I assume these are in scope for this community. For example, the 8 queens puzzle has 92 valid...
#1: Initial revision
by
trichoplax
·
2026-09-17T16:56:45Z (about 22 hours ago)
Should a puzzle solution be solely correct or incorrect, or can a solution have a score?
Some puzzles have more than 1 valid solution, but with all being equally correct. In this Meta question I assume these are in scope for this community. For example, the [8 queens puzzle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_queens_puzzle) has 92 valid solutions, and any 1 of them would make a correct answer. Here I want to consider instead puzzles for which answers can be ranked - one answer can be better than another. For example, [A knight's sightseeing tour](https://proposals.codidact.com/posts/295788) has the length of the tour as its score, with lowest score winning. I added a leaderboard to the question to encourage competition to find the shortest tour, which implicitly suggests that an answer is still valid even if it does not have the best possible score. Is this kind of puzzle in scope here, or does an answer have to be (one of) the best possible? Does an answer need to prove that there can be no improvement? Is a puzzle with a leaderboard in scope for this community?