--- title: Use a Rust SAT Solver to play better pickleball! - Bob... description: A conference talk exploring how SAT and constraint satisfaction solvers can solve real-world scheduling problems, using pickleball tournament scheduling as a... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/use-a-rust-sat-solver-to-play-better-pickleball---bob-mcnaughton---ndc-toronto-2026-vessn7tat twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Use a Rust SAT Solver to play better pickleball! - Bob McNaughton - NDC Toronto 2026 | daily.dev og:description: A conference talk exploring how SAT and constraint satisfaction solvers can solve real-world scheduling problems, using pickleball tournament scheduling as a... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/use-a-rust-sat-solver-to-play-better-pickleball---bob-mcnaughton---ndc-toronto-2026-vessn7tat og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/vesSn7taT.png og:image:alt: Use a Rust SAT Solver to play better pickleball! - Bob McNaughton - NDC Toronto 2026 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Use a Rust SAT Solver to play better pickleball! - Bob McNaughton - NDC Toronto 2026 **[NDC Conferences](https://daily.dev/sources/ndc)** · 54 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A conference talk exploring how SAT and constraint satisfaction solvers can solve real-world scheduling problems, using pickleball tournament scheduling as a hands-on example. The speaker covers the theoretical background of NP-completeness and the Cook-Levin theorem, introduces practical solver libraries (Z3 and SCIP via Rust), and walks through code that arranges players into balanced teams of three by minimizing skill-level variance across groups. Performance benchmarks show the SCIP-based solution handles up to 99 players in about 100 seconds but fails to converge for 111+ players. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [A Dumb Introduction to z3](https://daily.dev/posts/a-dumb-introduction-to-z3-4yrba9xly) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How my 2yo taught me constraint solving](https://daily.dev/posts/how-my-2yo-taught-me-constraint-solving-zbbt3a4f8) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [SATisfying Solutions to Difficult Problems\!](https://daily.dev/posts/satisfying-solutions-to-difficult-problems--outwkxh5b) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [From constraint models to playable puzzle games](https://daily.dev/posts/from-constraint-models-to-playable-puzzle-games-f3qpshgb8) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#rust](https://daily.dev/tags/rust) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/use-a-rust-sat-solver-to-play-better-pickleball---bob-mcnaughton---ndc-toronto-2026-vessn7tat) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Use a Rust SAT Solver to play better pickleball! - Bob McNaughton - NDC Toronto 2026","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/use-a-rust-sat-solver-to-play-better-pickleball---bob-mcnaughton---ndc-toronto-2026-vessn7tat","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/use-a-rust-sat-solver-to-play-better-pickleball---bob-mcnaughton---ndc-toronto-2026-vessn7tat"},"datePublished":"2026-07-31T12:10:00.951Z","dateModified":"2026-07-31T12:10:19.713Z","description":"A conference talk exploring how SAT and constraint satisfaction solvers can solve real-world scheduling problems, using pickleball tournament scheduling as a...","image":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GcyiiCRSfWs/sddefault.jpg","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GcyiiCRSfWs/sddefault.jpg","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"NDC Conferences","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"NDC Conferences","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--SiIyojEj--/f_auto/v1748760369/logos/ndc","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/ndc"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/use-a-rust-sat-solver-to-play-better-pickleball---bob-mcnaughton---ndc-toronto-2026-vessn7tat","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"rust","timeRequired":"PT54M","video":{"@type":"VideoObject","name":"Use a Rust SAT Solver to play better pickleball! - Bob McNaughton - NDC Toronto 2026","description":"A conference talk exploring how SAT and constraint satisfaction solvers can solve real-world scheduling problems, using pickleball tournament scheduling as a...","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GcyiiCRSfWs/sddefault.jpg","uploadDate":"2026-07-31T12:10:00.951Z","duration":"PT54M","url":"https://api.daily.dev/r/vesSn7taT","embedUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/embed/GcyiiCRSfWs"}} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"NDC Conferences","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/ndc"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Use a Rust SAT Solver to play better pickleball! - Bob McNaughton - NDC Toronto 2026"}]} ```