Related papers: Spot it(R) Solitaire
When solving k-in-a-Row games, the Hales-Jewett pairing strategy [4] is a well-known strategy to prove that specific positions are (at most) a draw. It requires two empty squares per possible winning line (group) to be marked, i.e., with a…
We study the outcomes of various positions of the game Snort. When played on graphs admitting an automorphism of order two that maps vertices outside of their closed neighbourhoods (called opposable graphs), the second player has a winning…
We study supersolvable line arrangements in ${\mathbb P}^2$ over the reals and over the complex numbers, as the first step toward a combinatorial classification. Our main results show that a nontrivial (i.e., not a pencil or near pencil)…
This paper considers the effect of riffle shuffling on decks of cards, allowing for some cards to be indistinguishable from other cards. The dual problem of dealing a game with hands, such as bridge or poker, is also considered. The…
Initial Orbit Determination (IOD) is the classical problem of estimating the orbit of a body in space without any presumed information about the orbit. The geometric formulation of the ''angles-only'' IOD in three-dimensional space: find a…
There are many combinatorial games in which a move can terminate the game, such as a checkmate in chess. These moves give rise to diverse situations that fall outside the scope of the classical normal play structure. To analyze these games,…
We study a planning problem based on Plotting, a tile-matching puzzle video game published by Taito in 1989. The objective of this game is to remove a target number of coloured blocks from a grid by sequentially shooting blocks into the…
A maximal arc of degree k in a finite projective plane P of order q = ks is a set of (q-s+1)k points that meets every line of P in either k or 0 points. The collection of the nonempty intersections of a maximal arc with the lines of P is a…
I adapt Berlekamp's light bulb switching game to finite projective plans and finite affine planes, then find the worst arrangement of lit bulbs for planes of even and odd orders. The results are then extended from the planes to spaces of…
Morpion Solitaire is a popular single player game, performed with paper and pencil. Due to its large state space (on the order of the game of Go) traditional search algorithms, such as MCTS, have not been able to find good solutions. A…
A fake projective plane is a smooth complex surface which is not the complex projective plane but has the same Betti numbers as the complex projective plane. The first example of such a surface was constructed by David Mumford in 1979 using…
Chessboard and chess piece recognition is a computer vision problem that has not yet been efficiently solved. However, its solution is crucial for many experienced players who wish to compete against AI bots, but also prefer to make…
A positional game is a game where two players sequentially label vertices of a hypergraph, consisting of a board and a collection of winning sets, with colors assigned to each player until all vertices of the board are claimed. The first…
Given a set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane, its separability is the minimum number of lines needed to separate all its pairs of points from each other. We show that the minimum number of lines needed to separate $n$ points, picked randomly…
We present an algorithm to estimate the rotation pole of a principal-axis rotator using silhouette images collected from multiple camera poses. First, a set of images is stacked to form a single silhouette-stack image, where the object's…
In this article, we establish a class of new projected type iteration methods based on matrix spitting for solving the linear complementarity problem. Also, we provide a sufficient condition for the convergence analysis when the system…
In this expository article, we discuss the rank-derangement problem, which asks for the number of permutations of a deck of cards such that each card is replaced by a card of a different rank. This combinatorial problem arises in computing…
A poset game is a two-player game played over a partially ordered set (poset) in which the players alternate choosing an element of the poset, removing it and all elements greater than it. The first player unable to select an element of the…
We study the classical game of peg solitaire when diagonal jumps are allowed. We prove that on many boards, one can begin from a full board with one peg missing, and finish with one peg anywhere on the board. We then consider the problem of…
Partially-ordered set games, also called poset games, are a class of two-player combinatorial games. The playing field consists of a set of elements, some of which are greater than other elements. Two players take turns removing an element…