How puzzles are made › Research
Star Battle generation benchmark: 12,000 seed attempts
Reported 2026-10-29: 2,000 seeds for each size from 5×5 to 10×10, using 8 workers after the region-repair upgrade. These are historical aggregate results transcribed from the generator's benchmark notes (source revision 8472433); this publication is not a new benchmark run.
| Grid | Attempts | Accepted | Acceptance | Easy | Medium | Hard | Expert | Wall time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5×5 | 2000 | 1943 | 97.2% | 1732 | 211 | 0 | 0 | 0.3 s |
| 6×6 | 2000 | 1755 | 87.8% | 1434 | 310 | 11 | 0 | 0.8 s |
| 7×7 | 2000 | 1681 | 84.0% | 797 | 722 | 151 | 11 | 2.5 s |
| 8×8 | 2000 | 1692 | 84.6% | 565 | 791 | 293 | 43 | 9.3 s |
| 9×9 | 2000 | 1713 | 85.7% | 397 | 719 | 470 | 127 | 53 s |
| 10×10 | 2000 | 1705 | 85.3% | 298 | 602 | 534 | 271 | 486 s |
What acceptance means: a seed passes region repair, shape limits and the human-technique grader, then an exhaustive solver confirms exactly one solution matching the intended stars. The difficulty counts cover accepted puzzles only. The remaining attempts fail one or more checks; this summary does not break down rejection causes.
Difficulty score and limits
Score = Σ (steps at level × level weight). Levels 1–5 use weights 0, 0.15, 1, 2.5 and 4: single candidate, cell elimination, two-unit, three-unit and four-unit confinement. The grader always tries the easiest available technique first.
Easy uses levels 1–2. Medium reaches level 3 at most twice. Hard uses level 3 at least three times or level 4 once. Higher requirements are expert. These are internal difficulty labels, not ratings calibrated against player solve times; a different solving strategy can produce a different trace.
Limitations: this CSV contains six aggregate rows, not individual seed outcomes or a representative sample of all possible Star Battle grids. Wall times are for the original eight-worker run; the exact CPU model was not recorded, so they are not portable performance guarantees. To repeat the procedure with the same source revision, run node generator/batch.mjs 2000 5,6,7,8,9,10; seed values are grid size × 1,000,000 + 1…2,000.
Download the benchmark CSV. The published aggregate dataset is available under CC BY 4.0. Cite: Solvedle, “Star Battle generation benchmark: 12,000 seed attempts”, 2026-10-29, solvedle.com/research/star-battle-generation.