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In 1979, David Fabian found a complete game of two-person Chinese Checkers in 30 moves (15 by each player) [Martin Gardner, Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers, MAA, 1997]. This solution requires that the two players cooperate to generate a…
This paper develops and analyses a novel quantum combinatorial game: quantum checkers (codenamed Cheqqers). The concepts of superposition, entanglement, measurements and interference from quantum mechanics are integrated into the game of…
A query game is a pair of a set $Q$ of queries and a set $\mathcal{F}$ of functions, or codewords $f:Q\rightarrow \mathbb{Z}.$ We think of this as a two-player game. One player, Codemaker, picks a hidden codeword $f\in \mathcal{F}$. The…
Domineering is a two-player game played on a checkerboard in which one player places dominoes vertically, while the other places them horizontally. In this paper, we find out the minimum number of moves for a game of Domineering to end on…
The $k$-majority game is played with $n$ numbered balls, each coloured with one of two colours. It is given that there are at least $k$ balls of the majority colour, where $k$ is a fixed integer greater than $n/2$. On each turn the player…
We introduce a two-player game in which one and his/her opponent attempt to pack as many ``prisoners'' as possible on the squares of an n-by-n checkerboard; each prisoner has to be ``protected'' by at least as many guards as the number of…
A circular Nim game is a two player impartial combinatorial game consisting of n stacks of tokens placed in a circle. A move consists of choosing k consecutive stacks, and taking at least one token from one or more of the k stacks. The last…
We prove computational intractability of variants of checkers: (1) deciding whether there is a move that forces the other player to win in one move is NP-complete; (2) checkers where players must always be able to jump on their turn is…
Clobber is a new two-player board game. In this paper, we introduce the one-player variant Solitaire Clobber where the goal is to remove as many stones as possible from the board by alternating white and black moves. We show that a…
The game of nim, with its simple rules, its elegant solution and its historical importance is the quintessence of a combinatorial game, which is why it led to so many generalizations and modifications. We present a modification with a new…
We introduce a new family of one-player games, involving the movement of coins from one configuration to another. Moves are restricted so that a coin can be placed only in a position that is adjacent to at least two other coins. The goal of…
We consider Chess played on an $m \times n$ board (with $m$ and $n$ arbitrary positive integers), with only the two kings and the white rook remaining, but placed at arbitrary positions. Using the symbolic finite state method, developed by…
The study of the combinatorial game Nim and its variants is rich and varied, but little is known of the game Nim with a Pass. It is Nim, but once per game a player is permitted to skip their turn but this can only be done if a nonempty pile…
The move-minimizing puzzles presented here are certain types of one-player combinatorial games that are shown to have explicit solutions whenever they can be encoded in a certain way as diamond-colored modular or distributive lattices. Our…
The number of quantifiers needed to express first-order properties is captured by two-player combinatorial games called multi-structural (MS) games. We play these games on linear orders and strings, and introduce a technique we call…
Conway Checkers is a game played with a checker placed in each square of the lower half of an infinite checkerboard. Pieces move by jumping over an adjacent checker, removing the checker jumped over. Conway showed that it is not possible to…
We examine short combinatorial games for three or more players under a new play convention in which a player who cannot move on their turn is the unique loser. We show that many theorems of impartial and partizan two-player games under…
The game of Nim, which has been well known for many years, has numerous variations. One such variation is Circular Nim, where piles of stones are arranged on a circumference, and players take stones from consecutive adjacent piles in one…
This paper provides a polynomial-time algorithm for solving parity games that runs in $\mathcal{O}(n^{2}\cdot(n + m))$ time-ending a search that has taken decades. Unlike previous attractor-based algorithms, the presented algorithm only…
We introduce a generalization of "Solo Chess", a single-player variant of the game that can be played on chess.com. The standard version of the game is played on a regular 8 x 8 chessboard by a single player, with only white pieces, using…