English

How do you fix an Oval Track Puzzle?

Group Theory 2018-03-01 v3

Abstract

The oval track group, OTn,kOT_{n,k}, is the subgroup of the symmetric group, SnS_n, generated by the basic moves available in a generalized oval track puzzle with nn tiles and a turntable of size kk. In this paper we completely describe the oval track group for all possible nn and kk and use this information to answer the following question: If the tiles are removed from an oval track puzzle, how must they be returned in order to ensure that the puzzle is still solvable? As part of this discussion we introduce the parity subgroup of SnS_n in the case when nn is even.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1612.04476,
  title  = {How do you fix an Oval Track Puzzle?},
  author = {David A. Nash and Sara Randall},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.04476},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

11 pages, 2 figures, 11 diagrams V2: Major changes with many of the more elementary details removed as suggested by a reviewer V3: Additional explanation (and visualizations) added to examples of how to fix specific oval track puzzles

R2 v1 2026-06-22T17:23:06.933Z