Phutball Endgames are Hard
Computational Complexity
2007-05-23 v2 Computer Science and Game Theory
Abstract
We show that, in John Conway's board game Phutball (or Philosopher's Football), it is NP-complete to determine whether the current player has a move that immediately wins the game. In contrast, the similar problems of determining whether there is an immediately winning move in checkers, or a move that kings a man, are both solvable in polynomial time.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cs/0008025,
title = {Phutball Endgames are Hard},
author = {Erik D. Demaine and Martin L. Demaine and David Eppstein},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cs/0008025},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
9 pages, 8 figures. Revised to include additional references on the complexity of checkers