English

The Shortest Interesting Binary Words

Combinatorics 2025-02-06 v2 Formal Languages and Automata Theory

Abstract

I will show that there exist two binary words (one of length 4 and one of length 6) that play a special role in many different problems in combinatorics on words. They can therefore be considered \textit{the shortest interesting binary words}. My claim is supported by the fact that these two words appear in dozens of papers in combinatorics on words.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.21145,
  title  = {The Shortest Interesting Binary Words},
  author = {Gabriele Fici},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.21145},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:52:31.749Z