Optimization of queens

Louis Reasoner is having a terrible time doing exercise 2.42 . His queens procedure seems to work, but it runs extremely slowly. (Louis never does manage to wait long enough for it to solve even the 6 × 6 case.) When Louis asks Eva Lu Ator for help, she points out that he has interchanged the order of the nested mappings in the flatmap , writing it as

(flatmap
 (lambda (new-row)
   (map (lambda (rest-of-queens)
          (adjoin-position new-row k rest-of-queens))
        (queen-cols (- k 1))))
 (enumerate-interval 1 board-size))

Explain why this interchange makes the program run slowly. Estimate how long it will take Louis's program to solve the eight-queens puzzle, assuming that the program in exercise 2.42 solves the puzzle in time T .

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