Colorstacks send this program to a friend

Hall of Fame visit

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ColorStacks is a single player logistic puzzle with 7 levels.
Below, you see a (half size) picture of level 3.



The board has columns filled with colored blocks.
The bottom block is fixed and defines the color of the column.
The other blocks may be moved, 1 or 2 at the time, to another column.
A game is solved if all columns only contain blocks of their own color.

the Contest
The ColorStacks contest is purely a matter of honour.
Players with the highest scores are listed in the Hall-of-Fame.

Strategy
ColorStacks offers great opportunities to explore different strategies:
from intuition to analyses to AI search techniques.
It offers a challenge to programmers, mathematicians and anybody with talents
in combinatorics and game solving.

Game description
A move is : taking the top block (or 2 top blocks) of a column and placing them
on top of the blocks in another column.
Only blocks of the same color may be in contact (rest on each other).

In the starting position a column does not contain movable blocks of it's
own color.
A game is solved if all columns only contain blocks of it's own (bottom) color.

The computer only has a passive role:

- it provides the board
- enables moves by mouse or keyboard
- rejects illegal moves
- calculates the score
- reports the score to the Hall-of-fame
- automatically saves the best solution per level
- automatically saves 1 unsolved game per level
- provides a menu to select
- review of old games
- start of a new level if previous level is solved

- supplies in line help information

the Levels
There are 7 levels.
Level 1 starts with 3 columns. Each higher level adds 1 column,
so level 7 has 9 columns.
A player receives points for a solved level.
A higher level yields more points as does a shorter solution.
These points are added to the score.
If a player has obtained a score of minimal 15, and after each improvement,
an e-mail message is generated to report this achievement to the Hall-of-Fame.
The user must send this message. Colorstacks only provides the layout.

Starting patterns are different for levels 1,2 and levels 3..7.
The starting pattern for levels 3..7 (5..9 columns) has no solution
for levels 1 and 2.(3 and 4 columns).
I do not have an explanation for this.
Also, I do not know of an analytical approach of this puzzle.
For the higher levels, I am not sure to know the shortest solution.

Installation
Colorstacks executes under Windows 95 and up.
It ships as a single .exe file.

There is no installation procedure.
the Windows Registry is not changed.
Program size is 324kB.