English

Slitherlink on Triangular Grids

Combinatorics 2026-02-20 v2

Abstract

Let GG be a plane graph and let CC be a cycle in GG. For each finite face of GG, count the number of edges of CC the face contains. We call this the Slitherlink signature of CC. The symmetric difference AA of two cycles with the same signature is totally even, meaning every vertex is incident to an even number of edges in AA and every face contains an even number of edges in AA. In this paper, we completely characterize totally even subsets in the triangular grid, and count the number of edges in any totally even subset of the triangular grid. We also show that the size of the symmetric difference of two cycles with the same signature in the triangular grid is divisible by 1212; this is best possible since 12 is the greatest common divisor of all the sizes of the symmetric difference between two cycles with the same signature in a triangular grid.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2410.19078,
  title  = {Slitherlink on Triangular Grids},
  author = {Charles Gong},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.19078},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

18 pages, 35 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T19:34:46.832Z