English

Proper colouring Painter-Builder game

Combinatorics 2017-11-08 v3

Abstract

We consider the following two-player game, parametrised by positive integers nn and kk. The game is played between Painter and Builder, alternately taking turns, with Painter moving first. The game starts with the empty graph on nn vertices. In each round Painter colours a vertex of her choice by one of the kk colours and Builder claims an edge between two previously unconnected vertices. Both players should maintain that during the game the graph admits a proper kk-colouring. The game ends if either all nn vertices have been coloured, or Painter has no legal move. In the former case, Painter wins the game, in the latter one Builder is the winner. We prove that the minimal number of colours k=k(n)k=k(n) allowing Painter's win is of logarithmic order in the number of vertices nn. Biased versions of the game are also considered.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1612.02156,
  title  = {Proper colouring Painter-Builder game},
  author = {Małgorzata Bednarska-Bzdęga and Michael Krivelevich and Viola Mészáros and Clément Requilé},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.02156},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

11 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-22T17:15:54.670Z