English

Queens in exile: non-attacking queens on infinite chess boards

Combinatorics 2019-07-30 v2

Abstract

Number the cells of a (possibly infinite) chessboard in some way with the numbers 0, 1, 2, ... Consider the cells in order, placing a queen in a cell if and only if it would not attack any earlier queen. The problem is to determine the positions of the queens. We study the problem for a doubly-infinite chessboard of size Z x Z numbered along a square spiral, and an infinite single-quadrant chessboard (of size N x N) numbered along antidiagonals. We give a fairly complete solution in the first case, based on the Tribonacci word. There are connections with combinatorial games.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1907.09120,
  title  = {Queens in exile: non-attacking queens on infinite chess boards},
  author = {F. Michel Dekking and Jeffrey Shallit and N. J. A. Sloane},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.09120},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

28 pages, 6 figures, 6 tables (V2: Added reference to earlier work on X,Y,M,P sequences. Minor improvements to wording and punctuation.)