Karnaugh Map Solver (2–5 Variables)

The Karnaugh map is the digital designer's geometric shortcut: arrange the truth table in Gray-code order so that logically adjacent minterms become physically adjacent cells, and minimization turns into spotting rectangles. This solver does the spotting for you — and does it exactly. The groupings are not heuristic: they come from a Quine–McCluskey minimization (with Petrick's method for the tie-breaking cover selection), so the picture and the algebra can never disagree, and the result is provably minimal two-level logic.

Click any cell to cycle it through 0 → 1 → × (don't-care) and the map re-groups live; every group is drawn with its own color, dash pattern, and legend entry stating the product term it represents and which variables it eliminated — a group of 2 removes one variable, 4 removes two, 8 removes three. Wrap-around adjacency (the map is a torus: edges and corners touch) is handled exactly like the textbooks promise, and five-variable problems render as the classic pair of four-variable maps that overlay each other.

Don't-cares are where K-maps earn their keep in real design — BCD inputs that never exceed 9, unused state codes — and the solver uses them the way the algorithm does: freely, wherever they enlarge a group, never as required outputs.

Every result is verified before it is shown: the minimized expression is expanded back against your truth table row by row, and the confirmation (or, if the impossible happens, an error) is part of the output. The worked solution walks the full Quine–McCluskey derivation — prime implicants, essential selection, cover — so the map, the algebra, and the method stay one story.