Filling a grid with boxes with numbers with decreasing size - math

Question

There is this interesting game, that has numbers in a grid, where each number has progressively smaller font. The player's task is to click on the numbers in succession.
I'm interested in the algorithm that creates the boxes for the numbers, I cannot think of a way it works.
Apparently the grid has N numbers (apart from the 1.88 in the picture), number 1 has the biggest font and succesively the font size decreases. Then the numbers are somehow placed on the grid and boxes grow around them. But it doesn't seem totally random, as there are some horizotal lines that go across the whole grid.
Do you have an idea on how this might work?

Answer 1

It looks to me as though the boxes have been generated by successive division. That is, starting with the full rectangle, a dividing line (horizontal or vertical) was placed, and then the two resulting rectangles were subdivided in turn, until there were enough rectangles for the game.
Here's a sketch of the first algorithm I would try. N is the number of rectangles I want to divide the original rectangle into, and A is a critical aspect ratio used to stop the small rectangles getting too narrow. (Perhaps A = 1.5 would be a good start.)
Create an empty priority queue and add the full rectangle to it.
If the length of the priority queue is greater than or equal to N, stop.
Remove the largest rectangle, R, from the priority queue.
Choose whether to divide it horizontally or vertically: if its aspect ratio (width/height) is greater than A, divide it vertically; if less than 1/A, divide it horizontally, otherwise choose at random.
Decide where to put the dividing line. (Perhaps randomly between 40% and 60% along the chosen dimension.)
This divides R into two smaller rectangles. Add both of them to the priority queue. Go to step 2.
When this algorithm completes, there are N rectangles in the queue. Put the number 1 in the largest of them, the number 2 in the second largest, and so on.
It turns out that putting the numbers into the boxes is not quite as straightforward as I assumed in my first attempt. The area metric works well for subdividing the rectangles nicely, but it doesn't work for putting the numbers into the boxes, because for fitting text into a box, the height and width both have to be taken into account (the area is not so useful).
Instead of explaining the algorithm for putting numbers into the boxes, I will just give you some sample code in Python and let you reverse-engineer it!
import heapq, itertools, random
import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont
# ALGORITHM PARAMETERS
aspect_max = 1.5 # Above this ratio, always divide vertically
aspect_min = 1.0 # Below this ratio, always divide horizontally
div_min = 0.4 # Minimum position for dividing line
div_max = 0.6 # Maximum position for dividing line
digit_ratio = 0.7 # Aspect ratio of widest digit in font
label_margin = 2 # Margin around label (pixels)
class Rectangle(object):
def __init__(self, x, y, w, h):
self.x = x
self.y = y
self.w = w
self.h = h
self.area = self.w * self.h
self.aspect = float(self.w) / self.h
def __le__(self, other):
# The sense of this comparison is inverted so we can put
# Rectangles into a min-heap and be able to pop the largest.
return other.area <= self.area
def __repr__(self):
return 'Rectangle({0.x}, {0.y}, {0.w}, {0.h})'.format(self)
def divide(self, n):
"""
Divide this rectangle into `n` smaller rectangles and yield
them in order by area (largest first).
"""
def division(l):
return random.randrange(int(l * div_min), int(l * div_max))
queue = [self]
while len(queue) < n:
r = heapq.heappop(queue)
if (r.aspect > aspect_max
or r.aspect > aspect_min
and random.random() < 0.5):
# Vertical division
w = division(r.w)
heapq.heappush(queue, Rectangle(r.x, r.y, w, r.h))
heapq.heappush(queue, Rectangle(r.x + w, r.y, r.w - w, r.h))
else:
# Horizontal division
h = division(r.h)
heapq.heappush(queue, Rectangle(r.x, r.y, r.w, h))
heapq.heappush(queue, Rectangle(r.x, r.y + h, r.w, r.h - h))
while queue:
yield heapq.heappop(queue)
def font_height(self, n):
"""
Return the largest font height such that we can draw `n`
digits in this rectangle.
"""
return min(int((self.w - label_margin * 2) / (digit_ratio * n)),
self.h - label_margin * 2)
def draw_rectangles(rectangles, fontfile):
"""
Create and return an Image containing `rectangles`. Label each
rectangle with a number using the TrueType font in `fontfile`.
"""
rectangles = list(rectangles)
im = Image.new('RGBA', (1 + max(r.x + r.w for r in rectangles),
1 + max(r.y + r.h for r in rectangles)))
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(im)
for digits in itertools.count(1):
rectangles = sorted(rectangles,
key = lambda r: r.font_height(digits),
reverse = True)
i_min = 10 ** (digits - 1)
i_max = 10 ** digits
i_range = i_max - i_min
for i in xrange(i_range):
if i >= len(rectangles): return im
r = rectangles[i]
draw.line((r.x, r.y, r.x + r.w, r.y, r.x + r.w, r.y + r.h,
r.x, r.y + r.h, r.x, r.y),
fill = 'black', width = 1)
label = str(i + i_min)
font = ImageFont.truetype(fontfile, r.font_height(digits))
lw, lh = font.getsize(label)
draw.text((r.x + (r.w - lw) // 2, r.y + (r.h - lh) // 2),
label, fill = 'black', font = font)
rectangles = rectangles[i_range:]
Here's a sample run:
>>> R = Rectangle(0, 0, 400, 400)
>>> draw_rectangles(R.divide(30), '/Library/Fonts/Verdana.ttf').save('q10009528.png')

Answer 2

The pattern of the cuts looks recursive. That is, the process of dividing the region into rectangles consists of cutting a rectangle in two, over and over. There are two cuts that divide the whole rectangular region (the horizontal cuts above and below 1), so we can't tell which cut came first, but we see the cuts as a kind of tree: the cut that separates 1 from 10 produced a large rectangle below it (20, 21, 4, 10, etc.), which was then divided by the vertical cut between 21 and 4, the rectangle containing 4 was later divided by the cut that separates 4 and 14, and so on. There are N cuts that produce N regions plus one leftover ("1.88") which is not necessary but which might give us a clue.
Now we just have to figure out the order of the cuts, the choice of proportion and the choice of orientation.
Consecutive numbers are rarely neighbors, so it looks as if numbers are not assigned as the cutting progresses. Instead, the region is chopped into rectangles, the rectangles are sorted by size and then numbers are assigned (notice that 20 and 21 are neighbors, but they were formed by other cuts after the one that divides them).
A plausible hypothesis for the order of the cuts is that the algorithm always cuts the largest rectangle. If that were not true, we might see, e.g., 14 bigger than 15 and 18 combined, and I see no example of that.
Proportion... With careful measurement we could see the actual distribution of proportions, but I don't feel like doing that much work. We see no very long, thin rectangles and no 50/50 cuts, so at a guess I'd say the algorithm chooses randomly, in some range like [0.6, 0.8]. Maybe it tries to avoid making a rectangle very close to the size of a rectangle that already exists. After all the cuts, the rectangle chosen to be left over ("1.88") is neither the biggest nor the smallest; maybe it's random, maybe it's the second-biggest, maybe it's something else-- more examples would be useful.
The orientation seems to be strongly biased towards cutting rectangles across their narrow width, rather than "lengthwise". This has the effect of producing rectangles more like squares and less like books on a shelf. The only possible exception I can see is the 1-9 cut, which might divide the block whose lower-right number is 1 lengthwise. But that depends on the order of cuts above and below 1, so it leads to a hypothesis: the algorithm always cuts a rectangle along its shorter dimension, and the 1-9 cut was actually the first.
That's about as far as I can go, short of breaking out a ruler and calculator.