English

A square-grid coloring problem

Combinatorics 2020-04-22 v1

Abstract

Suppose that n2n \ge 2, and we wish to plant kk different types of trees in the squares of an n×nn \times n square grid. We can have as many of each type as we want. The only rule is that every pair of types must occur in an adjacent pair of squares somewhere in the grid. The question is: given nn, what is the largest that kk can be? Denote this number by Γ(n)\Gamma(n), and call this the *complete coloring number* of the n×nn \times n grid. A little thought shows that Γ(n)2n1\Gamma(n) \le 2n-1. The main question we are interested in is whether Γ(n)=2n1\Gamma(n) = 2n-1 for every n2n \ge 2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2004.10192,
  title  = {A square-grid coloring problem},
  author = {Matthew Kahle and Francisco Martinez-Figueroa and Alexander Soifer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.10192},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

18 pages; 9 figures, 1 table

R2 v1 2026-06-23T15:00:28.692Z