Generalized Algorithm for Wythoff's Game with Basis Vector $(2^b,2^b)$
Abstract
Wythoff's Game is a variation of Nim in which players may take an equal number of stones from each pile or make valid Nim moves. W. A. Wythoff proved that the set of P-Positions (losing position), , for Wythoff's Game is given by . An open Wythoff problem remains where players make the valid Nim moves or remove stones from each pile, where is a fixed integer. We denote this as the game. For example, regular Wythoff's Game is just the game. In 2009, Duchne and Gravier proved an algorithm to generate the set of P-Positions for the game by exploiting the periodic nature of the differences of stones between the two piles modulo . We observe similar cyclic behaviour for any , where is a power of , modulo , and construct an algorithm to generate the set of P-Positions for this game. Let be a power of . We prove our algorithm works by first showing that it holds for the first terms in the game. Next, we construct an ordered multiset for the game from the terms, and an inductive proof follows. Moreover, we conjecture that all cyclic games require to be a power of , suggesting that there is no similar structure in the generalised game where isn't a power of . Future directions for generalising this result would likely utilise numeration systems, particularly the PV numbers.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1612.03068,
title = {Generalized Algorithm for Wythoff's Game with Basis Vector $(2^b,2^b)$},
author = {Shubham Aggarwal and Jared Geller and Shuvom Sadhuka and Max Yu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.03068},
year = {2017}
}