Related papers: Mis\`ere-play Hackenbush Sprigs

The numbers game is a one-player game played on a finite simple graph with certain "amplitudes" assigned to its edges and with an initial assignment of real numbers to its nodes. The moves of the game successively transform the numbers at…

Given a hypergraph $\cH \subseteq 2^I \setminus \{\emptyset\}$ on the ground set $I = \{1, \ldots, n\}$, we assign to each $i \in I$ a nonnegative integer $x_i$, that is a pile of $x_i$ tokens, and consider the following generalization of…

Sprouts is a two-player topological game, invented in 1967 in the University of Cambridge by John Conway and Michael Paterson. The game starts with p spots, and ends in at most 3p-1 moves. The first player who cannot play loses. The…

We introduce the game INFLUENCE, a scoring combinatorial game, played on a directed graph where each vertex is either colored black or white. The two players, Black and White play alternately by taking a vertex of their color and all its…

For any positive integer $h$, a graph $G=(V,E)$ is said to be $h$-magic if there exists a labeling $l:E(G)\to \mathbb{Z}_h -\{0\} $ such that the induced vertex set labeling $\ l^+ : V(G) \to \mathbb{Z}_h \ $ defined by $$ l^+ (v)=\sum_{uv…

The concept of nimbers--a.k.a. Grundy-values or nim-values--is fundamental to combinatorial game theory. Nimbers provide a complete characterization of strategic interactions among impartial games in their disjunctive sums as well as the…

Given $n$ piles of tokens and a positive integer $k \leq n$, the game Nim$^1_{n, =k}$ of exact slow $k$-Nim is played as follows. Two players move alternately. In each move, a player chooses exactly $k$ non-empty piles and removes one token…

In string theory, black holes are expected to transition into string stars as their Hawking temperatures approach the Hagedorn temperature. We study string stars and their phase transitions in the Euclidean spacetime…

Snort is a two-player game played on a simple graph in which players alternately colour a vertex such that they do not colour adjacent to their opponents' vertex. In combinatorial game theory, the temperature of a position is a measure of…

We consider mis\`{e}re Nim as a normal-play game obtained from Nim by removing the terminal position. While explicit formulas are known for the Sprague-Grundy functions of Nim and Welter's game, no explicit formula is known for that of…

A combinatorial game is a two-player game without hidden information or chance elements. The main object of combinatorial game theory is to obtain the outcome, which player has a winning strategy, of a given combinatorial game. Positions of…

The Higgs field is a connection one-form as the other bosonic fields, provided one describes space no more as a manifold M but as a slightly non-commutative generalization of it. This is well encoded within the theory of spectral triples:…

An antimagic labeling of a graph $G$ is an injection from $E(G)$ to $\{1,2,\dots,|E(G)|\}$ such that all vertex sums are pairwise distinct, where the vertex sum at vertex $u$ is the sum of the labels assigned to edges incident to $u$. A…

A combinatorial game is a two-player game without hidden information or chance elements. The disjunctive sum $G + H$ of games $G$ and $H$ is the game in which $G$ and $H$ are played in parallel, and a player makes a move on exactly one of…

The stringy Euler number and E-function of Batyrev for log terminal singularities can in dimension 2 also be considered for a normal surface singularity with all log discrepancies nonzero in its minimal log resolution. Here we obtain a…

We help Alice play a certain "convergence game" against Bob and win the prize, which is a constructive solution to a problem by Erd\H{o}s and Graham, posed in their 1980 book on open questions in combinatorial number theory. Namely, after…

Lights out is a game that can be played on any simple graph $G$. A configuration assigns one of the two states \emph{on} or \emph{off} to each vertex. For a given configuration, the aim of the game is to turn all vertices \emph{off} by…

A string graph is the intersection graph of curves in the plane. We prove that there exists an absolute constant $c>0$ such that if $G$ is a string graph on $n$ vertices, then $G$ contains either a clique or an independent set of size at…

We study the classical cosmic string solution in a theory with dynamical $U(1)$ symmetry breaking. We calculate the energy per unit length of the string and compare it to that obtained in a model with a fundamental Higgs. We find that the…

This paper addresses several significant gaps in the theory of restricted mis\`ere play (Plambeck, Siegel 2008), primarily in the well-studied universe of dead-ending games, $\mathcal{E}$ (Milley, Renault 2013); if a player run out of moves…