Related papers: Picture-Hanging Puzzles
A picture-hanging puzzle is the task of hanging a framed picture with a wire around a set of nails in such a way that it can remain hanging on certain specified sets of nails, but will fall if any more are removed. The classical brain…
In the picture-hanging puzzle we are to hang a picture so that the string loops around $n$ nails and the removal of any nail results in a fall of the picture. We show that the length of a sequence representing an element in the free group…
The picture-hanging puzzle, popularized by Demaine et al. (2014), asks for a way to wrap a wire around $n$ nails such that the picture hangs as long as fewer than $k$ nails are removed, but falls as soon as any $k$ are removed. Solutions…
Given a set of coins arranged in a line, we remove heads-up coins one at a time and flip any adjacent coins after each removal. The coin-removal problem is to determine for which arrangements of coins it is possible to remove all of the…
Let $S$ be a connected graph which contains an induced path of $n-1$ vertices, where $n$ is the order of $S.$ We consider a puzzle on $S$. A configuration of the puzzle is simply an $n$-dimensional column vector over $\{0, 1\}$ with…
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…
We study the complexity of symmetric assembly puzzles: given a collection of simple polygons, can we translate, rotate, and possibly flip them so that their interior-disjoint union is line symmetric? On the negative side, we show that the…
A hinged dissection of a set of polygons S is a collection of polygonal pieces hinged together at vertices that can be folded into any member of S. We present a hinged dissection of all edge-to-edge gluings of n congruent copies of a…
It has long been known to mathematicians and physicists that while a full rotation in three-dimensional Euclidean space causes tangling, two rotations can be untangled. Formally, an untangling is a based nullhomotopy of the double-twist…
The slinky, released from rest hanging under its own weight, falls in a peculiar manner. The bottom stays at rest until a wave hits it from above. Two cases -- one unphysical one where the slinky is able to pass through itself, and the…
A fuzzy Boolean function is a map $f:\cube^n\to [0,1]$, where $n\in\mathbb N$. We introduce and compare three ways of saying that such a function has bounded complexity. The first is a sampling property: the value $f(x)$ can be recovered,…
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…
Break a stick at random at $n-1$ points to obtain $n$ pieces. We give an explicit formula for the probability that every choice of $k$ segments from this broken stick can form a $k$-gon, generalizing similar work. The method we use can be…
We show how an image can, in principle, be described by the tangles of the graph of its pixels. The tangle-tree theorem provides a nested set of separations that efficiently distinguish all the distinguishable tangles in a graph. This…
Untangling is a process in which some vertices of a planar graph are moved to obtain a straight-line plane drawing. The aim is to move as few vertices as possible. We present an algorithm that untangles the cycle graph C_n while keeping at…
An example of reversible (or hinge inside-out transformable) figures is the Dudeney's Haberdasher's puzzle in which an equilateral triangle is dissected into four pieces, then hinged like a chain, and then is transformed into a square by…
We study the amount of information that is contained in "random pictures", by which we mean the sample sets of a Boolean model. To quantify the notion "amount of information", two closely connected questions are investigated: on the one…
We study the formation of knots on a macroscopic ball-chain, which is shaken on a horizontal plate at 12 times the acceleration of gravity. We find that above a certain critical length, the knotting probability is independent of chain…
A new computational technique based on the symbolic description utilizing kneading invariants is proposed and verified for explorations of dynamical and parametric chaos in a few exemplary systems with the Lorenz attractor. The technique…
A loop of chain can move along its own tangents, maintaining a steady shape. An open-ended chain undergoing a nontrivial motion must change its shape. One consequence is that chains pulled around objects will fail to follow the contours of…