English

In How Ways Can You Play Stanley Solitaire?

Combinatorics 2024-06-25 v1

Abstract

We introduce a very simple solitaire game, named Stanley Solitaire, in honor of Richard Stanley, and prove an explicit closed-form formula for the number of ways of playing it. Alas, the only proof that we know is via a deep theorem of Richard Stanley from 1984. We challenge the readers to find a more elementary proof.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2406.15980,
  title  = {In How Ways Can You Play Stanley Solitaire?},
  author = {Shalosh B. Ekhad and Doron Zeilberger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.15980},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

5 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:16:05.717Z