Preface

Abstract

Magic squares, chess-like problems, cryptarithmetic puzzles, and similar classes of problems have been extensively used to challenge human reasoning capabilities.\ud Lo Shu magic square can be traced back to 650 B.C., the eight-queens problem was proposed in 1848 by the chess player Max Bazzel TWO\ud × TWO=THREE puzzle appeared in Strand Magazine in 1924. These puzzles are nowadays widely used in constraint programming courses. The first programming language provided with constraint modelling primitives (Sketchpad) has been proposed by the Turing award winner Ivan Sutherland in his PhD thesis (1963