Related papers: Martin Gardner's minimum no-3-in-a-line problem
The ternary Goldbach conjecture, or three-primes problem, states that every odd number $n$ greater than $5$ can be written as the sum of three primes. The conjecture, posed in 1742, remained unsolved until now, in spite of great progress in…
One of the most famous conjectures in computer algebra is that matrix multiplication might be feasible in not much more than quadratic time. The best known exponent is 2.376, due to Coppersmith and Winograd. Many attempts to solve this…
A triple of vertices in a graph is a \emph{frustrated triangle} if it induces an odd number of edges. We study the set $F_n\subset[0,\binom{n}{3}]$ of possible number of frustrated triangles $f(G)$ in a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices. We prove…
The minimum dominating set problem asks for a dominating set with minimum size. First, we determine some vertices contained in the minimum dominating set of a graph. By applying a particular scheme, we ensure that the resulting graph is…
Given a word $w$, what is the maximum possible number of appearances of $w$ reading contiguously along any of the directions in $\{-1, 0, 1\}^d \setminus \{\mathbf{0}\}$ in a large $d$-dimensional grid (as in a word search)? Patchell and…
Rota's basis conjecture, open since 1989, states that if B_1, B_2, ..., B_n are n bases of a vector space of rank n, then there is an nxn grid of vectors such that the vectors in the ith row are precisely the elements of B_i and such that…
A fooling-set matrix has nonzero diagonal, but at least one in every pair of diagonally opposite entries is 0. Dietzfelbinger et al. '96 proved that the rank of such a matrix is at least $\sqrt n$. It is known that the bound is tight (up to…
Given an integer n greater of equal to 3, we investigate the minimal dimension of a subalgebra of M_n(K) with a trivial centralizer. It is shown that this dimension is 5 when n is even and 4 when it is odd. In the latter case, we also…
We prove an existence theorem for the sliding boundary variant of the Plateau problem for $2$-dimensional sets in $\mathbb{R}^n$. The simplest case of sufficient condition is when $n=3$ and the boundary $\Gamma$ is a finite disjoint union…
The 1-2-3 Conjecture asks whether almost all graphs can be (edge-)labelled with $1,2,3$ so that no two adjacent vertices are incident to the same sum of labels. In the last decades, several aspects of this problem have been studied in…
We give a short proof, using Lagrange inversion, of a congruence modulo 3 for the number of connected noncrossing graphs on n vertices that was conjectured by Emeric Deutsch and Bruce Sagan. A more complicated proof had been given earlier…
In this paper we consider genus one equations of degree n, namely a (generalised) binary quartic when n = 2, a ternary cubic when n = 3, and a pair of quaternary quadrics when n = 4. A new definition for the minimality of genus one…
In the Collatz 3x+1 problem, there are 3 possibilities: Starting from any positive number, we either reach the trivial loop (1,4,2), end up in a non-trivial loop, or go until infinity. In this paper, we shall show that if a non-trivial loop…
How many mutually non-attacking queens can be placed on a d-dimensional chessboard of size n? The n-queens problem in higher dimensions is a generalization of the well-known n-queens problem. We present an integer programming formulation of…
In 1959, Goodman determined the minimum number of monochromatic triangles in a complete graph whose edge set is two-coloured. Goodman also raised the question of proving analogous results for complete graphs whose edge sets are coloured…
The N-queens problem is to find the position of N queens on an N by N chess board such that no queens attack each other. The excluded diagonals N-queens problem is a variation where queens cannot be placed on some predefined fields along…
The n-th crossing number of a graph G, denoted cr_n(G), is the minimum number of crossings in a drawing of G on an orientable surface of genus n. We prove that for every a>b>0, there exists a graph G for which cr_0(G) = a, cr_1(G) = b, and…
Musta\c{t}\u{a} has given a conjecture for the graded Betti numbers in the minimal free resolution of the ideal of a general set of points on an irreducible projective algebraic variety. For surfaces in $\mathbb P^3$ this conjecture has…
By means of the Ehrhart theory of inside-out polytopes we establish a general counting theory for nonattacking placements of chess pieces with unbounded straight-line moves, such as the queen, on a polygonal convex board. The number of ways…
We prove that any subset $A \subseteq [3]^n$ with $3^{-n}|A| \ge (\log\log\log\log n)^{-c}$ contains a combinatorial line of length $3$, i.e., $x, y, z \in A$, not all equal, with $x_i=y_i=z_i$ or $(x_i,y_i,z_i)=(0,1,2)$ for all $i = 1, 2,…