Related papers: The flipping puzzle on a graph

We study reconfiguration problems for cliques in a graph, which determine whether there exists a sequence of cliques that transforms a given clique into another one in a step-by-step fashion. As one step of a transformation, we consider…

Configurations are necklaces with prescribed numbers of red and black beads. Among all possible configurations, the regular one plays an important role in many applications. In this paper, several aspects of regular configurations are…

An election over a finite set of candidates is called single-crossing if, as we sweep through the list of voters from left to right, the relative order of every pair of candidates changes at most once. Such elections have many attractive…

Here we introduce a new game on graphs, called cup stacking, following a line of what can be considered as $0$-, $1$-, or $2$-person games such as chip firing, percolation, graph burning, zero forcing, cops and robbers, graph pebbling, and…

Inspired by a chessboard puzzle of Dudeney, the general position problem in graph theory asks for a largest set $S$ of vertices in a graph such that no three elements of $S$ lie on a common shortest path. The number of vertices in such a…

Motivated by recent computational models for redistricting and detection of gerrymandering, we study the following problem on graph partitions. Given a graph $G$ and an integer $k\geq 1$, a $k$-district map of $G$ is a partition of $V(G)$…

We explore a reconfiguration version of the dominating set problem, where a dominating set in a graph $G$ is a set $S$ of vertices such that each vertex is either in $S$ or has a neighbour in $S$. In a reconfiguration problem, the goal is…

We introduce a new family of one-player games, involving the movement of coins from one configuration to another. Moves are restricted so that a coin can be placed only in a position that is adjacent to at least two other coins. The goal of…

We consider the problem of determining the minimum number of moves needed to solve a certain one-dimensional peg puzzle. Let N be a positive integer. The puzzle apparatus consists of a block with a single row of 2N+1 equally spaced holes…

In this dissertation, we explore the structure of inversion graphs of permutations--a class of graphs that naturally arises by representing each permutation as a graph, where vertices correspond to entries and edges encode inversions.…

Given a finite set $ S $ of points, we consider the following reconfiguration graph. The vertices are the plane spanning paths of $ S $ and there is an edge between two vertices if the two corresponding paths differ by two edges (one…

We study a popular puzzle game known variously as Clickomania and Same Game. Basically, a rectangular grid of blocks is initially colored with some number of colors, and the player repeatedly removes a chosen connected monochromatic group…

In combinatorial reconfiguration, the reconfiguration problems on a vertex subset (e.g., an independent set) are well investigated. In these problems, some tokens are placed on a subset of vertices of the graph, and there are three natural…

Flip-graph connectedness is established here for the vertex set of the 4-dimensional cube. It is found as a consequence that this vertex set has 92 487 256 triangulations, partitioned into 247 451 symmetry classes.

We propose a novel mathematical framework to address the problem of automatically solving large jigsaw puzzles. This problem assumes a large image, which is cut into equal square pieces that are arbitrarily rotated and shuffled, and asks to…

We develop a combinatorial and order-theoretic framework for shuffles, understood as ordered concatenations of indexed families of sequences that induce total orders on the natural numbers. Motivated by the classical \v{S}arkovski\u{i}…

In reconfiguration, we are given two solutions to a graph problem, such as Vertex Cover or Dominating Set, with each solu tion represented by a placement of tokens on vertices of the graph. Our task is to reconfigure one into the other…

An overlap representation is an assignment of sets to the vertices of a graph in such a way that two vertices are adjacent if and only if the sets assigned to them overlap. The overlap number of a graph is the minimum number of elements…

We introduce higher-dimensional cubical sliding puzzles that are inspired by the classical 15 Puzzle from the 1880s. In our puzzles, on a $d$-dimensional cube, a labeled token can be slid from one vertex to another if it is topologically…

The graph reconstruction conjecture asserts that every simple graph on at least three vertices is uniquely determined by its deck of vertex-deleted subgraphs. In this expository article we survey the conjecture and present an…