Related papers: On the Cookie Monster Problem

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 generalize the well-known broken stick problem in several ways, including a discrete "brick" analogue and a sequential "pick-up sticks/bricks" version. The limit behavior of the broken brick problem gives a combinatorial proof of the…

This study examines the computational complexity of the decision problem modeled on the smartphone game Bus Out. The objective of the game is to load all the passengers in a queue onto appropriate buses using a limited number of bus parking…

This paper explores the partition properties of roller coaster permutations, a class of permutations characterized by maximizing the number of alternating runs in all subsequences. We establish a connection between the structure of these…

Suppose $n$ different pairs of socks are put in a tumble dryer. When the dryer is finished socks are taken out one by one, if a sock matches one of the socks on the sorting table both are removed, otherwise it is put on the table until its…

For $n$ and $k$ integers we introduce the notion of some partition of $n$ being able to generate another partition of $n$. We solve the problem of finding the minimum size partition for which the set of partitions this partition can…

Let (F_n^{(k)})_{n\geq -(k-2)} be the k-generalized Fibonacci sequence, defined as the linear recurrence sequence whose first k terms are \(0, 0, \ldots, 0, 1\), and whose subsequent terms are determined by the sum of the preceding k terms.…

In response to the Numberphile video regarding the Mondrian Puzzle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49KvZrioFB0, we provide a lower bound on how many integers less than a given threshold $x$ satisfy $M(n) \neq 0$ where $M(n)$ is the quantity…

We investigate some versions of the famous 100 prisoner problem for the infinite case, where there are infinitely many prisoners and infinitely many boxes with labels. In this case, many questions can be asked about the admissible steps of…

Given a set of $n$ integer-valued coin types and a target value $t$, the well-known change-making problem asks for the minimum number of coins that sum to $t$, assuming an unlimited number of coins in each type. In the more general…

This paper coins the notion of Joker games, a variant of concurrent games where the players are not strictly adversarial. Instead, Player 1 can get help from Player 2 by playing a Joker move. We formalize these games as cost games and…

Solving a Radon-Kaczmarz puzzle involves filling a square grid with positive integers, each between one and nine, satisfying certain clues coming from the sum of entries that lie on the same line in the square grid. Given a set of slopes…

Knot mosaics are used to model physical quantum states. The mosaic number of a knot is the smallest integer $m$ such that the knot can be represented as a knot $m$-mosaic. In this paper we establish an upper bound for the crossing number of…

A fundamental result in cake cutting states that for any number of players with arbitrary preferences over a cake, there exists a division of the cake such that every player receives a single contiguous piece and no player is left envious.…

We consider a random walk on integers where at the first visits to a site the walker gets a positive drift, but where after a certain number of visits the walker gets a negative drift. We prove that the walker is almost surely transient to…

Let $Q_n$ be the $n$-dimensional Hamming cube and $N=2^n$. We prove that the number of maximal independent sets in $Q_n$ is asymptotically \[2n2^{N/4},\] as was conjectured by Ilinca and the first author in connection with a question of…

Candy Nim is a variant of Nim in which both players aim to take the last candy in a game of Nim, with the added simultaneous secondary goal of taking as many candies as possible. We give bounds on the number of candies the first and second…

We study searching and sorting in rounds motivated by a fair division question: given a cake cutting problem with $n$ players, compute a fair allocation in at most $k$ rounds of interaction with the players. Rounds interpolate between the…

In the Maker-Breaker domination game played on a graph $G$, Dominator's goal is to select a dominating set and Staller's goal is to claim a closed neighborhood of some vertex. We study the cases when Staller can win the game. If Dominator…

The 3x+1 problem is one of the most classical problems in computer science, related to many fields. As it is thought by scientists a highly hard problem, resolving it successfully not only can improve the research in many relating fields,…