Related papers: The Complexity of Some Combinatorial Puzzles

This paper presents a new algorithm for the convex hull problem, which is based on a reduction to a combinatorial decision problem POLYTOPE-COMPLETENESS-COMBINATORIAL, which in turn can be solved by a simplicial homology computation. Like…

Given a tame knot K presented in the form of a knot diagram, we show that the problem of determining whether K is knotted is in the complexity class NP, assuming the generalized Riemann hypothesis (GRH). In other words, there exists a…

${ NP}$-complete problem "Hamiltonian cycle"\ for graph $G=(V,E)$ is extended to the "Hamiltonian Complement of the Graph"\ problem of finding the minimal cardinality set $H$ containing additional edges so that graph $G=(V,E\cup H)$ is…

I study the class of problems efficiently solvable by a quantum computer, given the ability to "postselect" on the outcomes of measurements. I prove that this class coincides with a classical complexity class called PP, or Probabilistic…

Conjunctive query (CQ) evaluation is NP-complete, but becomes tractable for fragments of bounded hypertreewidth. Approximating a hard CQ by a query from such a fragment can thus allow for an efficient approximate evaluation. While…

In this paper we define a construct called a time-graph. A complete time-graph of order n is the cartesian product of a complete graph with n vertices and a linear graph with n vertices. A time-graph of order n is given by a subset of the…

Inspired by computational complexity results for the quantified constraint satisfaction problem, we study the clones of idempotent polymorphisms of certain digraph classes. Our first results are two algebraic dichotomy, even "gap",…

In this paper we show that the Mastermind Satisfiability Problem (MSP) is NP-complete. The Mastermind is a popular game which can be turned into a logical puzzle called Mastermind Satisfiability Problem in a similar spirit to the…

We prove that the Diophantine problem for orientable quadratic equations in free metabelian groups is decidable and furthermore, NP-complete. In the case when the number of variables in the equation is bounded, the problem is decidable in…

In this paper, we investigate the computational complexity of the knapsack problem and subset sum problem for the following tropical algebraic structures. We consider the semigroup of square matrices of size $k \times k$ with non-negative…

We address lower bounds on the time complexity of algorithms solving the propositional satisfiability problem. Namely, we consider two DPLL-type algorithms, enhanced with the unit clause and pure literal heuristics. Exponential lower bounds…

We show that unless P=NP, there exists no polynomial time (or even pseudo-polynomial time) algorithm that can decide whether a multivariate polynomial of degree four (or higher even degree) is globally convex. This solves a problem that has…

We consider a learning-augmented framework for NP-hard permutation problems. The algorithm has access to predictions telling, given a pair $u,v$ of elements, whether $u$ is before $v$ or not in an optimal solution. Building on the work of…

Various forms of sorting problems have been studied over the years. Recently, two kinds of sorting puzzle apps are popularized. In these puzzles, we are given a set of bins filled with colored units, balls or water, and some empty bins.…

The $P$ versus $NP$ problem is still unsolved. But there are several oracles with $P$ unequal $NP$ relative to them. Here we will prove, that $P\not=NP$ relative to a $P$-complete oracle. In this paper, we use padding arguments as the proof…

Satisfiability checking for monotone modal logic is known to be (only) NP-complete. We show that this remains true when the logic is extended with aconjunctive and alternation-free fixpoint operators as well as the universal modality; the…

This paper investigates the computational complexity of deciding whether the vertices of a graph can be partitioned into a disjoint union of cliques and a triangle-free subgraph. This problem is known to be $\NP$-complete on arbitrary…

We study the complexity of computational problems arising from existence theorems in extremal combinatorics. For some of these problems, a solution is guaranteed to exist based on an iterated application of the Pigeonhole Principle. This…

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…

We establish that the subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE) threshold problem for mean-payoff games is NP-complete. While the SPE threshold problem was recently shown to be decidable (in doubly exponential time) and NP-hard, its exact worst…