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This project investigates the potential of computers to solve complex tasks such as games. The paper proves that the complexity of a generalized version of spider solitaire is NP-Complete and uses much of structure of the proof that…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2011-10-06 Jesse Stern

We show that the maximum success probability of players sharing quantum entanglement in a two-player game with classical questions of logarithmic length and classical answers of constant length is NP-hard to approximate to within constant…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-11-24 Anand Natarajan , Thomas Vidick

We study the problem of completely automatically verifying uninterpreted programs---programs that work over arbitrary data models that provide an interpretation for the constants, functions and relations the program uses. The verification…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2020-08-27 Umang Mathur , P. Madhusudan , Mahesh Viswanathan

The guarding game is a game in which several cops try to guard a region in a (directed or undirected) graph against Robber. Robber and the cops are placed on the vertices of the graph; they take turns in moving to adjacent vertices (or…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2013-11-15 R. Samal , T. Valla

Bloxorz is an online puzzle game where players move a 1 by 1 by 2 block by tilting it on a subset of the two dimensional grid. Bloxorz features switches that open and close trapdoors. The puzzle is to move the block from its initial…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2014-11-24 Tom C. van der Zanden , Hans L. Bodlaender

In repeated games, players choose actions concurrently at each step. We consider a parameterized setting of repeated games in which the players form a population of an arbitrary size. Their utility functions encode a reachability objective.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-10-06 Nathalie Bertrand , Patricia Bouyer , Luc Lapointe , Corto Mascle

We investigate the computational complexity of admissibility of inference rules in infinite-valued {\L}ukasiewicz propositional logic (\L). It was shown in [13] that admissibility in {\L} is checkable in PSPACE. We establish that this…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2013-05-22 Emil Jeřábek

We prove that king chasing problem in Chinese Chess is NP-hard when generalized to $n\times n$ boards. `King chasing' is a frequently-used strategy in Chinese Chess, which means that the player has to continuously check the opponent in…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-04-03 Chao Li , Zhujun Zhang , Chao Yang

In this paper we study a single player game consisting of $n$ black checkers and $m$ white checkers, called shifting the checkers. We have proved that the minimum number of steps needed to play the game for general $n$ and $m$ is $nm + n +…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2013-07-18 Lei Wang , Xiaodong Wang , Yingjie Wu , Daxin Zhu

Kill-all Go is a variant of Go in which Black tries to capture all white stones, while White tries to survive. We consider computational complexity of Kill-all Go with two rulesets, Chinese rules and Japanese rules. We prove that: (i)…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2019-11-27 Zhujun Zhang

The connected domination game is a variation of the domination game where the played vertices must form a connected subgraph at all stages of the game. In this paper we prove that deciding whether the game connected domination number is…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-06-02 Vesna Iršič Chenoweth

0-1 Knapsack is a fundamental NP-complete problem. In this article we prove that it remains NP-complete even when the weights of the objects in the packing constraints and their values in the objective function satisfy specific stringent…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2009-10-15 Chinmay Karande

We study the complexity of symmetric assembly puzzles: given a collection of simple polygons, can we translate, rotate, and possibly flip them so that their interior-disjoint union is line symmetric? On the negative side, we show that the…

We establish the first hardness results for the problem of computing the value of one-round games played by a verifier and a team of provers who can share quantum entanglement. In particular, we show that it is NP-hard to approximate within…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-11-21 Julia Kempe , Hirotada Kobayashi , Keiji Matsumoto , Ben Toner , Thomas Vidick

In many multiagent environments, a designer has some, but limited control over the game being played. In this paper, we formalize this by considering incompletely specified games, in which some entries of the payoff matrices can be chosen…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-04-30 Markus Brill , Rupert Freeman , Vincent Conitzer

We investigate certain word-construction games with variable turn orders. In these games, Alice and Bob take turns on choosing consecutive letters of a word of fixed length, with Alice winning if the result lies in a predetermined target…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2021-05-04 Pierre Marcus , Ilkka Törmä

This paper develops and analyses a novel quantum combinatorial game: quantum checkers (codenamed Cheqqers). The concepts of superposition, entanglement, measurements and interference from quantum mechanics are integrated into the game of…

This paper investigates the popular card game UNO from the viewpoint of algorithmic combinatorial game theory. We define simple and concise mathematical models for the game, including both cooperative and uncooperative versions, and analyze…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2013-12-03 Erik D. Demaine , Martin L. Demaine , Nicholas J. A. Harvey , Ryuhei Uehara , Takeaki Uno , Yushi Uno

Normally a chess problem must have a unique solution, and is deemed unsound even if there are alternatives that differ only in the order in which the same moves are played. In an enumerative chess problem, the set of moves in the solution…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Noam D. Elkies

Finding, counting, or determining the existence of Nash equilibria, where players must play optimally given each others' actions, are known to be computational intractable problems. We ask whether weakening optimality to the requirement…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Mete Şeref Ahunbay , Paul W. Goldberg , Edwin Lock , Panayotis Mertikopoulos , Bary S. R. Pradelski , Bassel Tarbush