Lights Out Linear Algebra

The purpose of this project is to solve the game of Light’s Out! by using basic knowledge of Linear algebra including matrix addition, vector spaces, linear combinations, and row reducing to reduced echelon form. |

Lights Out! is an electronic game that was released by Tiger Toys in 1995. It is also now a flash game online. The game consists of a 5x5 grid of lights. When the game stats a set of lights are switched to on randomly or in a pattern. Pressing one light will toggle it and the lights adjacent to it on and off. The goal of the game is to switch all the lights off in as few button presses as possible. In the folling examples, 1 will represent a “on” light and 0 will represent an “off” light. Yellow represents a button pressed and changed and green represents a button that was not pressed but was changed as a result of the pressed button.

Example 1

1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 |

Starting Grid Pressing button 1 Pressing button 18 Example 2

1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 |

Zero button presses One button press Two button presses Three button presses

Notice Pressing a button on even number of times has the same effect as if the button was never pressed and pressing the button an odd number of