Related papers: Zen Puzzle Garden is NP-complete
We study alternating parity good-for-games (GFG) automata, i.e., alternating parity automata where both conjunctive and disjunctive choices can be resolved in an online manner, without knowledge of the suffix of the input word still to be…
Su-Doku, a popular combinatorial puzzle, provides an excellent testbench for heuristic explorations. Several interesting questions arise from its deceptively simple set of rules. How many distinct Su-Doku grids are there? How to find a…
We analyze the computational complexity of optimally playing the two-player board game Push Fight, generalized to an arbitrary board and number of pieces. We prove that the game is PSPACE-hard to decide who will win from a given position,…
Without further ado, we present the P_3-game. The P_3-game is decidable for elementary classes of graphs such as paths and cycles. From an algorithmic point of view, the connected P_3-game is fascinating. We show that the connected P_3-game…
The problem of determining whether a graph $G$ can be realized as a unit-distance graph in $\mathbb{Z}^2$ is NP-complete. As far as we can tell, a proof of this result has never been written up. We prove NP-completeness of this problem by…
We show that the following problem is EXP-complete: given a rational v and a two player, zero-sum Boolean game G determine whether the value of G is at least v. The proof is via a translation of the proof of the same result for Boolean…
This project investigates the potential of computers to solve complex tasks such as games. The paper proves that the complexity of a generalized version of spider solitaire is NP-Complete and uses much of structure of the proof that…
Solving a Radon-Kaczmarz puzzle involves filling a square grid with positive integers, each between one and nine, satisfying certain clues coming from the sum of entries that lie on the same line in the square grid. Given a set of slopes…
In this paper, we show that the friends-and-strangers problem is PSPACE-complete by reduction from the Ncl (non-deterministic constraint logic) problem.
We conjecture that PPAD has a PCP-like complete problem, seeking a near equilibrium in which all but very few players have very little incentive to deviate. We show that, if one assumes that this problem requires exponential time, several…
Notes on the Spinpossible puzzle game. We give a mathematical description of the game, prove some elementary bounds on the length of optimal solutions, and consider variations of the game which place restrictions on the set of permitted…
Many puzzle video games, like Sokoban, involve moving some agent in a maze. The reachable locations are usually apparent for a human player, and the difficulty of the game is mainly related to performing actions on objects, such as pushing…
We define and give results on the game NecklaceNim NN($n$,$k$) which is PathNim PN($n$,$k$) with an additional move allowed on the end vertices. This game arises as a sub-game in the context of solving CircularNim CN($n$,$k$) when $k-2$…
Petri games are a multi-player game model for the automatic synthesis of distributed systems, where the players are represented as tokens on a Petri net and are grouped into environment players and system players. As long as the players…
In this article, we describe the solution of the Juniper Green game for every integer, with techniques that are elementary enough to be explained to students who have mastered the notions of divisors and multiples. A general method allows…
We consider the $n\times n$ game of Phutball. It is shown that, given an arbitrary position of stones on the board, it is a PSPACE-hard problem to determine whether the specified player can win the game, regardless of the opponent's choices…
In this paper we study the conjugacy problem in polycyclic groups. Our main result is that we construct polycyclic groups $G_n$ whose conjugacy problem is at least as hard as the subset sum problem with $n$ indeterminates. As such, the…
Interpreting three-leaf binary trees or {\em rooted triples} as constraints yields an entailment relation, whereby binary trees satisfying some rooted triples must also thus satisfy others, and thence a closure operator, which is known to…
A formula is presented for designing zero-determinant(ZD) strategies of general finite games, which have $n$ players and players can have different numbers of strategies. To this end, using semi-tensor product (STP) of matrices, the profile…
We introduce a generalization of "Solo Chess", a single-player variant of the game that can be played on chess.com. The standard version of the game is played on a regular 8 x 8 chessboard by a single player, with only white pieces, using…