Gaming the Known and Unknown via Puzzle Solving With an Artificial Intelligence Agent

Researchers design multiple strategies for an artificial intelligent (AI) agent to solve a stochastic puzzle like Minesweeper. For decades, efforts in solving games had been exclusive to solving two-player games (i.e., board games like checkers, chess-like games, etc.), where the game outcome can be correctly and efficiently predicted by applying some artificial intelligence (AI) search technique and collecting a massive amount of gameplay statistics. However, such a method and technique cannot be applied directly to the puzzle-solving domain since puzzles are generally played alone (single-player) and have unique characteristics (such as stochastic or hidden information). So then, a question arose as to how the AI technique can retain its performance for solving two-player games but instead applied to a single-agent puzzle? For years, puzzles and games had been regarded as interchangeable or one part of the other.