Related papers: Renyi-Ulam Games and Forbidden Substrings
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.…
A neat 1972 result of Pohl asserts that [3n/2]-2 comparisons are sufficient, and also necessary in the worst case, for finding both the minimum and the maximum of an n-element totally ordered set. The set is accessed via an oracle for…
We consider one-round games between a classical verifier and two provers who share entanglement. We show that when the constraints enforced by the verifier are `unique' constraints (i.e., permutations), the value of the game can be well…
In the Maker-Breaker resolving game, two players named Resolver and Spoiler alternately select unplayed vertices of a given graph $G$. The aim of Resolver is to select all the vertices of some resolving set of $G$, while Spoiler aims to…
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…
Consider the following probabilistic one-player game: The board is a graph with $n$ vertices, which initially contains no edges. In each step, a new edge is drawn uniformly at random from all non-edges and is presented to the player,…
This paper studies a language-based opacity enforcement in a two-player, zero-sum game on a graph. In this game, player 1 (P1) wins if it can achieve a secret temporal goal described by the language of a finite automaton, no matter what…
Consider a two-person zero-sum search game between a hider and a searcher. The hider hides among $n$ discrete locations, and the searcher successively visits individual locations until finding the hider. Known to both players, a search at…
Euclid is a well known two-player impartial combinatorial game. A position in Euclid is a pair of positive integers and the players move alternately by subtracting a positive integer multiple of one of the integers from the other integer…
Online Ramsey game is played between Builder and Painter on an infinite board $K_{\mathbb N}$. In every round Builder selects an edge, then Painter colors it red or blue. Both know target graphs $H_1$ and $H_2$. Builder aims to create…
The $(m,n)$-online Ramsey game is a combinatorial game between two players, Builder and Painter. Starting from an infinite set of isolated vertices, Builder draws an edge on each turn and Painter immediately paints it red or blue. Builder's…
The rules of Sudoku are often specified using twenty seven \texttt{all\_different} constraints, referred to as the {\em big} \mrules. Using graphical proofs and exploratory logic programming, the following main and new result is obtained:…
We study the positional game where two players, Maker and Breaker, alternately select respectively $1$ and $b$ previously unclaimed edges of $K_n$. Maker wins if she succeeds in claiming all edges of some odd cycle in $K_n$ and Breaker wins…
In a guessing game, players guess the value of a random real number selected using some probability density function. The winner may be determined in various ways; for example, a winner can be a player whose guess is closest in magnitude to…
Consider the following one-player game played on an initially empty graph with $n$ vertices. At each stage a randomly selected new edge is added and the player must immediately color the edge with one of $r$ available colors. Her objective…
Zeckendorf proved that every positive integer $n$ can be written uniquely as the sum of non-adjacent Fibonacci numbers; a similar result, though with a different notion of a legal decomposition, holds for many other sequences. We use these…
This paper is concerned with the reconnaissance game that involves two mobile agents: the Intruder and the Defender. The Intruder is tasked to reconnoiter a territory of interest (target region) and then return to a safe zone (retreat…
We examine a two-person game we call Will-Testing in which the strategy space for both players is a real number. It has no equilibrium. When an infinitely large set of players plays this in all possible pairings, there is an equilibrium for…
The number of quantifiers needed to express first-order properties is captured by two-player combinatorial games called multi-structural (MS) games. We play these games on linear orders and strings, and introduce a technique we call…
"Guess Who?" is a popular two player game where players ask "Yes"/"No" questions to search for their opponent's secret identity from a pool of possible candidates. This is modeled as a simple stochastic game. Using this model, the optimal…