Related papers: On Vaughan Pratt's crossword problem

Given a (finite or infinite) subset $X$ of the free monoid $A^*$ over a finite alphabet $A$, the rank of $X$ is the minimal cardinality of a set $F$ such that $X \subseteq F^*$. We say that a submonoid $M$ generated by $k$ elements of $A^*$…

The Hales-Jewett Theorem states that given any finite nonempty set $\A$ and any finite coloring of the free semigroup $S$ over the alphabet $\A$ there is a {\it variable word\/} over $\A$ all of whose instances are the same color. This…

It was shown by V. Bergelson that any set B with positive upper multiplicative density contains nicely intertwined arithmetic and geometric progressions: For each positive integer k there exist integers a,b,d such that $ {b(a+id)^j:i,j…

In this document we achieve exact and asymptotic enumeration of words, compositions over a finite group, and/or integer compositions characterized by local restrictions and, separately, subsequence pattern avoidance. We also count…

Many fundamental questions in additive number theory (such as Goldbach's conjecture, Fermat's last theorem, and the Twin Primes conjecture) can be expressed in the language of sum and difference sets. As a typical pair of elements…

We consider partitions of n-dimensional boxes in R^n, n>1, into a finite number of boxes with pairwise disjoint interiors. We study sets X \subseteq (0,\infty) with the Property (W_n): for every n-dimensional box P and every partition of P,…

A subset $X$ of an abelian $G$ is said to be {\em complete} if every element of the subgroup generated by $X$ can be expressed as a nonempty sum of distinct elements from $X$. Let $A\subset \Z_n$ be such that all the elements of $A$ are…

According to [1] an $n$-dimensional $\mathcal{N}$--set is a compact subset $A$ of $\mathbb{R}^n$ such that for every $x$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$ there is $y$ in $A$ with $y-x$ in $\mathbb{Z}^n$. We prove that every two dimensional…

Let $(W,S)$ be a Coxeter system of type $A$, so that $W$ can be identified with the symmetric group $\mathrm{Sym}(n)$ for some positive integer $n$ and $S$ with the set of simple transpositions $\{\,(i,i+1)\mid 1\leqslant i\leqslant…

A pair of letters $x$ and $y$ are said to alternate in a word $w$ if, after removing all letters except for the copies of $x$ and $y$ from $w$, the resulting word is of the form $xyxy\ldots$ (of even or odd length) or $yxyx\ldots$ (of even…

A composition of a nonnegative integer (n) is a sequence of positive integers whose sum is (n). A composition is palindromic if it is unchanged when its terms are read in reverse order. We provide a generating function for the number of…

Let g be a simple Lie algebra, with fixed Borel subalgebra b and with Weyl group W. Expanding on previous work of Fan and Stembridge in the simply laced case, this note aims to study the fully commutative elements of W, and their…

Let $G$ be a graph, and let $w$ be a positive real-valued weight function on $V(G)$. For every subset $S$ of $V(G)$, let $w(S)=\sum_{v \in S} w(v).$ A non-empty subset $S \subset V(G)$ is a weighted safe set of $(G,w)$ if, for every…

Let S be a finite set of words over an alphabet Sigma. The set S is said to be complete if every word w over the alphabet Sigma is a factor of some element of S*, i.e. w belongs to Fact(S*). Otherwise if S is not complete, we are interested…

A variant of the well-known Set Covering Problem is studied in this paper, where subsets of a collection have to be selected, and pairwise conflicts among subsets of items exist. The selection of each subset has a cost, and the inclusion of…

Word equations are a crucial element in the theoretical foundation of constraint solving over strings, which have received a lot of attention in recent years. A word equation relates two words over string variables and constants. Its…

We find all words $W(x,y,z)$ in the free group $F(x,y,z)$, such that for every group $G$ and an element $c\in G$ the algebraic system $(G,*_{W,c})$ with the binary operation $*_{W,c}$ given by $a*_{W,c}b=W(a,b,c)$ for $a,b\in G$ is a…

The Weak Completion Semantics (WCS) is a computational cognitive theory that has shown to be successful in modeling episodes of human reasoning. As the WCS is a recently developed logic programming approach, this paper investigates the…

For a finite loop $Q$, let $P (Q)$ be the set of elements that can be represented as a product containing each element of $Q$ precisely once. Motivated by the recent proof of the Hall-Paige conjecture, we prove several universal…

F. Wehrung has asked: Given a family $\mathcal{C}$ of subsets of a set $\Omega$, under what conditions will there exist a total ordering on $\Omega$ under which every member of $\mathcal{C}$ is convex? <p> Note that if $A$ and $B$ are…