[Solved] How would I program an algorithm to solve this puzzle? [closed]

Question

You can see this as a graph theory problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_theory).

Each given state of your puzzle is a Vertice of the graph, and each light switching is an edge that takes the Graph to another state.

Given a starting state, if you expand your graph breadth-first, your will find the sortest solution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadth-first_search).

It is beyond the scope of this answer to expand more than this. But I can point you to a python script I made to solve a similar but different 3×3 problem:

You can study my script to see what and why it does to solve this problem, and apply the same concepts to solve your problem on whatever language you desire.

Accepted Answer

You can see this as a graph theory problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_theory).

Each given state of your puzzle is a Vertice of the graph, and each light switching is an edge that takes the Graph to another state.

Given a starting state, if you expand your graph breadth-first, your will find the sortest solution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadth-first_search).

It is beyond the scope of this answer to expand more than this. But I can point you to a python script I made to solve a similar but different 3×3 problem:

You can study my script to see what and why it does to solve this problem, and apply the same concepts to solve your problem on whatever language you desire.