English

Evolomino is NP-complete

Computational Complexity 2025-11-11 v2 Combinatorics

Abstract

Evolomino is a pencil-and-paper logic puzzle popularized by the Japanese publisher Nikoli (like Sudoku, Kakuro, Slitherlink, Masyu, and Fillomino). The puzzle's name reflects its core mechanic: the shapes of polyomino-like blocks that players must draw gradually "evolve" in the directions indicated by pre-drawn arrows. We prove, by reduction from 3-SAT, that the question of whether there exists at least one solution to an Evolomino puzzle satisfying the rules is NP-complete. Since our reduction is parsimonious, i.e., it preserves the number of distinct solutions, we also prove that counting the number of solutions to an Evolomino puzzle is #P-complete.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2503.07611,
  title  = {Evolomino is NP-complete},
  author = {Andrei V. Nikolaev},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.07611},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

14 pages, 10 figures, 28 references, to be published in Siberian Electronic Mathematical Reports

R2 v1 2026-06-28T22:14:30.222Z