English

Discrete and Continuous Caching Games

Optimization and Control 2025-09-03 v2 Combinatorics

Abstract

We investigate a discrete search game called the Multiple Caching Game where the searcher's aim is to find all of a set of dd treasures hidden in nn locations. Allowed queries are sets of locations of size kk, and the searcher wins if in all dd queries, at least one treasure is hidden in one of the kk picked locations. P\'alv\"olgyi showed that the value of the game is at most kd(n+d1d)\frac{k^d}{\binom{n+d-1}{d}}, with equality for large enough nn. We conjecture the exact cases of equality. We also investigate variants of the game and show an example where their values are different, answering a question of P\'alv\"olgyi. This game is closely related to a continuous variant, Alpern's Caching Game, based on which we define other continous variants of the multiple caching game and examine their values.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2310.13777,
  title  = {Discrete and Continuous Caching Games},
  author = {Áron Jánosik and Csenge Miklós and Dániel G. Simon and Kristóf Zólomy},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.13777},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:57:16.798Z