English

The Game of Cycles

Combinatorics 2020-04-03 v1 General Topology

Abstract

The Game of Cycles, introduced by Su (2020), is played on a simple connected planar graph together with its bounded cells, and players take turns marking edges with arrows according to a sink-source rule that gives the game a topological flavor. The object of the game is to produce a cycle cell---a cell surrounded by arrows all cycling in one direction---or to make the last possible move. We analyze the two-player game for various classes of graphs and determine who has a winning strategy. We also establish a topological property of the game: that a board with every edge marked must have a cycle cell.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2004.00776,
  title  = {The Game of Cycles},
  author = {Ryan Alvarado and Maia Averett and Benjamin Gaines and Christopher Jackson and Mary Leah Karker and Malgorzata Aneta Marciniak and Francis Su and Shanise Walker},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.00776},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

20 pages, 22 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T14:36:12.115Z