Analysis of The Seven Wives of Henri VII - Mystery Master
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SevenWivesHenriVII

This four-star logic puzzle has 3 noun types, 7 nouns per type, 3 links, 22 facts, and no rules. It requires 147 marks, but only 3 grids.

Links

The relationships for this puzzle are "with", "immediately before", "immediately after", and "consecutive to". First, I can eliminate "immediately after" if I just swap the two nouns and use "immediately before". Second, I can eliminate "consecutive to" by judiciously using "immediately before" as well. So the links for this puzzle are "with" and "immediately before".

Update I realized if I added the link "more than one away", and used the positive verb, this decreased the number of assumptions required to solve the puzzle from 13 to 5!

Level 3

Without level 3, the program finds 35/147 marks and 0/21 pairs. If you told the program to pause after each mark, after 35 marks you will see that following facts are still enabled.

Facts
  1. The Russian queen immediately preceded Isabela (clue 2).
  2. Dominica was queen immediately before the French queen (clue 3).
  3. The Portugese queen was immediately before Maria (clue 5).
  4. Sophia was immediately before the Italian queen (clue 6).
  5. The Austrian queen was immediately before Rosanna (clue 7).
  6. Maria was not consecutive to the French queen (clue 8).
  7. Maria was not consecutive to the Russian queen (clue 8).
  8. The French queen was not consecutive to the Russian queen (clue 8).

Can Isabela be the Russian queen? No. Can Maria be the Portugese queen? No. Can Sophia be the Italian queen? No. Can Rosanna be the Austrian queen? No. Here's some harder questions. Can Maria be the French queen? No. Can Maria be the Russian queen? No.

Looking at facts 2 and 5, can Dominica be the Russian queen? No (mark 24), so Isabela is not the French queen (mark 23). Looking at facts 2 and 10, can Sophia be the Russian queen? Maybe, so Isabela may be the Italian queen. Looking at facts 5 and 9, can Dominica be the Portugese queen? No (mark 34), so Maria is not the French queen (mark 10). Looking at facts 5 and 11, can Dominica be the Austrian queen? No (mark 35), so Rosanna is not the French queen (mark 1). Looking at facts 9 and 10, can Sophia be the Portugese queen? Maybe, so Maria may be the Italian queen. Looking at facts 10 and 11, can Sophia be the Austrian queen? Maybe, so Rosanna may be the Italian queen. It appears the program has considered all this.

Here are the possible positions for each queen given by the remaining facts.

Level 3 looks at facts where their links all have the same noun type. All facts in this puzzle have a link with the same noun type (Order). This method systematically places a noun (nounX) from one of the facts with slotX (a noun of type Order). It then tries to place the remaining nouns found in the facts with a slot. If this is not possible, then nounX cannot be with slotX.

Let's focus on the first mark this method finds, an 'X' for 2nd and Russia. If Russia was 2nd, here is my interpretation of the process:

With level 3, this puzzle can be solved without assumptions. This is a very tough puzzle because you need to combine many facts in order to find a mark.