Related papers: Complexity of a Tetris variant
Holzer and Holzer (Discrete Applied Mathematics 144(3):345--358, 2004) proved that the Tantrix(TM) rotation puzzle problem is NP-complete. They also showed that for infinite rotation puzzles, this problem becomes undecidable. We study the…
We present an analysis of a coin-tossing problem posed by Daniel Litt which has generated some popular interest. We demonstrate a recursive identity which leads to relatively simple formulas for the excess number of wins for one player over…
The Traveling Tournament Problem is a sports-scheduling problem where the goal is to minimize the total travel distance of teams playing a double round-robin tournament. The constraint 'k' is an imposed upper bound on the number of…
Circular layouts are a popular graph drawing style, where vertices are placed on a circle and edges are drawn as straight chords. Crossing minimization in circular layouts is \NP-hard. One way to allow for fewer crossings in practice are…
We consider the following modification of annihilation game called node blocking. Given a directed graph, each vertex can be occupied by at most one token. There are two types of tokens, each player can move his type of tokens. The players…
We develop a theory of complexity for numerical computations that takes into account the condition of the input data and allows for roundoff in the computations. We follow the lines of the theory developed by Blum, Shub, and Smale for…
We study three problems related to the computational complexity of the popular game Minesweeper. The first is consistency: given a set of clues, is there any arrangement of mines that satisfies it? This problem has been known to be…
We consider a discrete version of the Witsenhausen problem where all random variables are bounded and take on integer values. Our main goal is to understand the complexity of computing good strategies given the distributions for the initial…
We study the complexity of several combinatorial problems in the model of binary networked public goods games. In this game, players are represented by vertices in a network, and the action of each player can be either investing or not…
In this paper, we introduce the Maximum Matrix Contraction problem, where we aim to contract as much as possible a binary matrix in order to maximize its density. We study the complexity and the polynomial approximability of the problem.…
This paper deals with sliding games, which are a variant of the better known pushpush game. On a given structure (grid, torus...), a robot can move in a specific set of directions, and stops when it hits a block or boundary of the…
We study the computational complexity of a perfect-information two-player game proposed by Aigner and Fromme. The game takes place on an undirected graph where n simultaneously moving cops attempt to capture a single robber, all moving at…
A comply/constrain game or a game with a Muller twist is a game where the next player is allowed to place constraints on opponent's next move. We develop a closed form formula for the Grundy value of the single-pile subtraction game where…
Classically, the time complexity of a first-order method is estimated by its number of gradient computations. In this paper, we study a more refined complexity by taking into account the `lingering' of gradients: once a gradient is computed…
In the trace reconstruction problem, one observes the output of passing a binary string $s \in \{0,1\}^n$ through a deletion channel $T$ times and wishes to recover $s$ from the resulting $T$ "traces." Most of the literature has focused on…
We analyze the computational complexity of the problem of deciding whether, for a given simple game, there exists the possibility of rearranging the participants in a set of $j$ given losing coalitions into a set of $j$ winning coalitions.…
Many discrete optimization problems amount to selecting a feasible set of edges of least weight. We consider in this paper the context of spatial graphs where the positions of the vertices are uncertain and belong to known uncertainty sets.…
This paper proves that arrangement of music is NP-hard when subject to various constraints: avoiding musical dissonance, limiting how many notes can be played simultaneously, and limiting transition speed between chords. These results imply…
This paper studies the complexity of solving two classes of non-cooperative games in a distributed manner in which the players communicate with a set of system nodes over noisy communication channels. The complexity of solving each game…
We explore the following problem: given a collection of creases on a piece of paper, each assigned a folding direction of mountain or valley, is there a flat folding by a sequence of simple folds? There are several models of simple folds;…