Related papers: Query Complexity of Mastermind Variants
In this paper we study a cooperative card game called Hanabi from the viewpoint of algorithmic combinatorial game theory. In Hanabi, each card has one among $c$ colors and a number between $1$ and $n$. The aim is to make, for each color, a…
In this paper, I introduce the retrieval problem, a simple yet common reasoning task that can be solved only by transformers with a minimum number of layers, which grows logarithmically with the input size. I empirically show that large…
The transformer has revolutionized modern AI across language, vision, and beyond. It consists of $L$ layers, each running $H$ attention heads in parallel and feeding the combined output to the subsequent layer. In attention, the input…
We are given $n$ balls and an unknown coloring of them with two colors. Our goal is to find a ball that belongs to the larger color class, or show that the color classes have the same size. We can ask sets of $k$ balls as queries, and the…
Partial-monitoring games constitute a mathematical framework for sequential decision making problems with imperfect feedback: The learner repeatedly chooses an action, opponent responds with an outcome, and then the learner suffers a loss…
The containment game is a full information game for two players, initialised with a set of occupied vertices in an infinite connected graph $G$. On the $t$-th turn, the first player, called Spreader, extends the occupied set to $g(t)$…
We initiate the study of a new variant of the Maker-Breaker positional game, which we call multistage game. Given a hypergraph $\mathcal{H}=(\mathcal{X},\mathcal{F})$ and a bias $b \ge 1$, the $(1:b)$ multistage Maker-Breaker game on…
The online Ramsey turnaround game is a game between two players, Builder and Painter, on a board of $n$ vertices using $3$ colors, for a fixed graph $H$ on at most $n$ vertices. The goal of Painter is to force a monochromatic copy of $H$,…
Despite the remarkable success of Transformer-based architectures in various sequential modeling tasks, such as natural language processing, computer vision, and robotics, their ability to learn basic sequential models, like Hidden Markov…
The permutahedron is the convex polytope with vertex set consisting of the vectors $(\pi(1),\dots, \pi(n))$ for all permutations (bijections) $\pi$ over $\{1,\dots, n\}$. We study a bandit game in which, at each step $t$, an adversary…
We study the complexity of solving two-player infinite duration games played on a fixed finite graph, where the control of a node is not predetermined but rather assigned randomly. In classic random-turn games, control of each node is…
In the Maker-Breaker positional game, Maker and Breaker take turns picking vertices of a hypergraph $H$, and Maker wins if and only if she possesses all the vertices of some edge of $H$. Deciding the outcome (i.e. which player has a winning…
A random $n$-permutation may be generated by sequentially removing random cards $C_1,...,C_n$ from an $n$-card deck $D = \{1,...,n\}$. The permutation $\sigma$ is simply the sequence of cards in the order they are removed. This permutation…
The game of SET is a popular card game in which the objective is to form Sets using cards from a special deck. In this paper we study single- and multi-round variations of this game from the computational complexity point of view and…
In recent years, two-player zero-sum games with multiple objectives have received a lot of interest as a model for the synthesis of complex reactive systems. In this framework, Player 1 wins if he can ensure that all objectives are…
The semi-random graph process is a single player game in which the player is initially presented an empty graph on $n$ vertices. In each round, a vertex $u$ is presented to the player independently and uniformly at random. The player then…
We study infinite two-player win/lose games $(A,B,W)$ where $A,B$ are finite and $W \subseteq (A \times B)^\omega$. At each round Player 1 and Player 2 concurrently choose one action in $A$ and $B$, respectively. Player 1 wins iff the…
The AB game is a two-player game, where the codemaker has to choose a secret code and the codebreaker has to guess it in as few questions as possible. It is a variant of the famous Mastermind game, with the only difference that all pegs in…
In 1981, Neil Immerman described a two-player game, which he called the "separability game" \cite{Immerman81}, that captures the number of quantifiers needed to describe a property in first-order logic. Immerman's paper laid the groundwork…
Several variations of hat guessing games have been popularly discussed in recreational mathematics. In a typical hat guessing game, after initially coordinating a strategy, each of $n$ players is assigned a hat from a given color set.…