Related papers: Chocolate Numbers
We start with the well-known game below: Two players hold a sheet of paper to their forehead on which a positive integer is written. The numbers are consecutive and each player can only see the number of the other one. In each time step,…
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 the following cake cutting game: Alice chooses a set P of n points in the square (cake) [0,1]^2, where (0,0) is in P; Bob cuts out n axis-parallel rectangles with disjoint interiors, each of them having a point of P as the lower…
In the Nikoli pencil-and-paper game Double Choco, a puzzle consists of an m $\times$ n grid of cells of white or gray color, separated by dotted lines where each cell possibly contains an integer. The goal is to partition the grid into…
A chain is an ordering of the integers 1 to n such that adjacent pairs have sums of a particular form, such as squares, cubes, triangular numbers, pentagonal numbers, or Fibonacci numbers. For example 4 1 2 3 5 form a Fibonacci chain while…
Mathematics has been used in the exploration and enumeration of juggling patterns. In the case when we catch and throw one ball at a time the number of possible juggling patterns is well-known. When we are allowed to catch and throw any…
The present paper deals with connected subtraction games in graphs, which are generalization of takeaway games. In a connected subtraction game, two players alternate removing a connected sub-graph from a given connected game-graph,…
We study a popular puzzle game known variously as Clickomania and Same Game. Basically, a rectangular grid of blocks is initially colored with some number of colors, and the player repeatedly removes a chosen connected monochromatic group…
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.…
The aim of this paper is to solve the "gift exchange" problem: you are one of n players, and there are n wrapped gifts on display; when your turn comes, you can either choose any of the remaining wrapped gifts, or you can "steal" a gift…
The deduction game is a variation of the game of cops and robber on graphs in which searchers must capture an invisible evader in at most one move. Searchers know each others' initial locations, but can only communicate if they are on the…
To divide a cake into equal sized pieces most people use a knife and a mixture of luck and dexterity. These attempts are often met with varying success. Through precise geometric constructions performed with the knife replacing Euclid's…
We introduce CUT, the class of 2-player partition games. These are NIM type games, played on a finite number of heaps of beans. The rules are given by a set of positive integers, which specifies the number of allowed splits a player can…
The numbers game is a one-player game played on a finite simple graph with certain "amplitudes" assigned to its edges and with an initial assignment of real numbers to its nodes. The moves of the game successively transform the numbers at…
Motivated by problems in percolation theory, we study the following 2-player positional game. Let $\Lambda_{m \times n}$ be a rectangular grid-graph with $m$ vertices in each row and $n$ vertices in each column. Two players, Maker and…
A pebbling move on a graph consists of taking two pebbles off of one vertex and placing one pebble on an adjacent vertex. In the traditional pebbling problem we try to reach a specified vertex of the graph by a sequence of pebbling moves.…
We describe and axiomatize finite solitaire puzzles and zero sum sequential games graph theoretically. Zermelo's theorem telling that there is a win for one of the players or a draw follows from the definitions. The god number is a…
Consider a configuration of pebbles distributed on the vertices of a connected graph of order $n$. A pebbling step consists of removing two pebbles from a given vertex and placing one pebble on an adjacent vertex. A distribution of pebbles…
We introduce the game of Cat Herding, where an omnipresent herder slowly cuts down a graph until an evasive cat player has nowhere to go. The number of cuts made is the score of a game, and we study the score under optimal play. In this…
The well-known "splitting necklace theorem" of Noga Alon says that each "necklace" having beads of n different colors can be fairly divided between k "thieves" by at most n(k-1) cuts. We demonstrate that Alon's result is a special case of a…