Related papers: Misere Hackenbush is NP-Hard

Consider the following one-player game played on an initially empty graph with $n$ vertices. At each stage a randomly selected new edge is added and the player must immediately color the edge with one of $r$ available colors. Her objective…

The Strong Ramsey game $\mathcal{R}(B,G)$ is a two player game with players $P_1$ and $P_2$, where $B$ and $G$ are $k$-uniform hypergraphs for some $k \geq 2$. $G$ is always finite, while $B$ may be infinite. $P_1$ and $P_2$ alternately…

We consider the problem of coloring a grid using k colors with the restriction that in each row and each column has an specific number of cells of each color. In an already classical result, Ryser obtained a necessary and sufficient…

We introduce a new type of positional games, played on a vertex set of a graph. Given a graph $G$, two players claim vertices of $G$, where the outcome of the game is determined by the subgraphs of $G$ induced by the vertices claimed by…

We prove that playing Candy Crush to achieve a given score in a fixed number of swaps is NP-hard.

We analyze the computational complexity of several new variants of edge-matching puzzles. First we analyze inequality (instead of equality) constraints between adjacent tiles, proving the problem NP-complete for strict inequalities but…

We are going to show that some variants of a puzzle called Pull in which the boxes have handles (i.e. we can only pull the boxes in certain directions) are NP-hard

We prove that a particular pushing-blocks puzzle is intractable in 2D, improving an earlier result that established intractability in 3D [OS99]. The puzzle, inspired by the game *PushPush*, consists of unit square blocks on an integer…

In this paper we introduce a new game; in this game there are two players who play as rival pirate gangs. The goal is to gather more treasure than your rival. The game is played on a graph and a player gathers treasure by moving to an…

Connect Four is a two-player game where each player attempts to be the first to create a sequence of four of their pieces, arranged horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, by dropping pieces into the columns of a grid of width seven and…

The Strong Ramsey game $\mathcal{R}(B,G)$ is a two player game with players $P_1$ and $P_2$, where $B$ and $G$ are $k$-uniform hypergraphs for some $k \geq 2$. $G$ is always finite, while $B$ may be infinite. $P_1$ and $P_2$ alternately…

The classical Maker-Breaker positional game is played on a board which is a hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$, with two players, Maker and Breaker, alternately claiming vertices of $\mathcal{H}$ until all the vertices are claimed. When the game…

We introduce achievement positional games, a convention for positional games which encompasses the Maker-Maker and Maker-Breaker conventions. We consider two hypergraphs, one red and one blue, on the same vertex set. Two players, Left and…

Hopping forcing is a single player combinatorial game in which the player is presented a graph on $n$ vertices, some of which are initially blue with the remaining vertices being white. In each round $t$, a blue vertex $v$ with all…

In the Binary Networked Public Goods game, every player needs to decide if she participates in a public project whose utility is shared equally by the community. We study the problem of deciding if there exists a pure strategy Nash…

Rikudo is a number-placement puzzle, where the player is asked to complete a Hamiltonian path on a hexagonal grid, given some clues (numbers already placed and edges of the path). We prove that the game is complete for NP, even if the…

We prove that a particular pushing-blocks puzzle is intractable in 3D. The puzzle, inspired by the game PushPush, consists of unit square blocks on an integer lattice. An agent may push blocks (but never pull them) in attempting to move…

Tetravex is a widely played one person computer game in which you are given $n^2$ unit tiles, each edge of which is labelled with a number. The objective is to place each tile within a $n$ by $n$ square such that all neighbouring edges are…

Recently, due to the widespread diffusion of smart-phones, mobile puzzle games have experienced a huge increase in their popularity. A successful puzzle has to be both captivating and challenging, and it has been suggested that this…

Let $(X, \mathcal{F})$ be a hypergraph. The Maker-Breaker game on $(X, \mathcal{F})$ is a combinatorial game between two players, Maker and Breaker. Beginning with Maker, the players take turns claiming vertices from $X$ that have not yet…