I opted for the "abuse regex" approach (because it's fun, and you can do it incrementally one s/// at a time until it works):
#!/usr/bin/perl
# http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=1121552
use strict;
use warnings;
for my $y ( 1..25 )
{
local $_ = tile(5,$y);
/1$/ and !/-/ and print "success 5,$y\n";
}
sub tile
{
my ($w, $h) = @_;
my $wm1 = $w - 1;
local $_ = ( '-' x $w . "\n" ) x $h;
s/-/1/;
1 while # print("$_\n"),
s/1..{$w}\K-/1/s ||
s/1\n.*\K-(?=\n)/2/ ||
s/1(?=.*$)\K-/4/ ||
s/2.{$wm1}\K-/2/s ||
s/2.{$wm1}\n\K-/1/ ||
s/-(?=2.*$)/3/ ||
s/-(?=..{$w}3)/3/s ||
s/^.*\K-(?=3)/2/ ||
s/-(?=.{$wm1}\n3)/4/ ||
s/-(?=.{$wm1}4)/4/s ||
s/^.*4\K-/1/ ||
s/-(?=.{$w}4\n)/3/s;
return $_;
}
which prints
success 5,1
success 5,3
success 5,7
success 5,9
success 5,11
success 5,13
success 5,17
success 5,19
success 5,21
success 5,23
Sure looks like multiple solutions exist.