English

Graphs that admit a Hamilton path are cup-stackable

Combinatorics 2024-11-26 v3

Abstract

Fay, Hurlbert and Tennant recently introduced a one-player game on a finite connected graph GG, which they called cup stacking. Stacks of cups are placed at the vertices of GG, and are transferred between vertices via stacking moves, subject to certain constraints, with the goal of stacking all cups at a single target vertex. If this is possible for every target vertex of GG, then GG is called stackable. In this paper, we prove that if GG admits a Hamilton path, then GG is stackable, which confirms several of the conjectures raised by Fay, Hurlbert and Tennant. Furthermore, we prove stackability for certain powers of bipartite graphs, and we construct graphs of arbitrarily large minimum degree and connectivity that do not allow stacking onto any of their vertices.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2401.06189,
  title  = {Graphs that admit a Hamilton path are cup-stackable},
  author = {Petr Gregor and Arturo Merino and Torsten Mütze and Francesco Verciani},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.06189},
  year   = {2024}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T14:14:40.541Z