Snipperclips: Cutting Tools into Desired Polygons using Themselves
Computational Geometry
2021-05-19 v1
Abstract
We study Snipperclips, a computer puzzle game whose objective is to create a target shape with two tools. The tools start as constant-complexity shapes, and each tool can snip (i.e., subtract its current shape from) the other tool. We study the computational problem of, given a target shape represented by a polygonal domain of vertices, is it possible to create it as one of the tools' shape via a sequence of snip operations? If so, how many snip operations are required? We consider several variants of the problem (such as allowing the tools to be disconnected and/or using an undo operation) and bound the number of operations needed for each of the variants.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2105.08305,
title = {Snipperclips: Cutting Tools into Desired Polygons using Themselves},
author = {Zachary Abel and Hugo Akitaya and Man-Kwun Chiu and Erik D. Demaine and Martin L. Demaine and Adam Hesterberg and Matias Korman and Jayson Lynch and André van Renssen and Marcel Roeloffzen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.08305},
year = {2021}
}