Related papers: How far away must forced letters be so that square…
Entringer, Jackson, and Schatz conjectured in 1974 that every infinite cubefree binary word contains arbitrarily long squares. In this paper we show this conjecture is false: there exist infinite cubefree binary words avoiding all squares…
A \emph{tangram} is a word in which every letter occurs an even number of times. Such word can be cut into parts that can be arranged into two identical words. The minimum number of cuts needed is called the \emph{cut number} of a tangram.…
A position $p$ in a word $w$ is critical if the minimal local period at $p$ is equal to the global period of $w$. According to the Critical Factorisation Theorem all words of length at least two have a critical point. We study the number…
We construct infinite cubefree binary words containing exponentially many distinct squares of length n. We also show that for every positive integer n, there is a cubefree binary square of length 2n.
We find generating functions for the number of words avoiding certain patterns or sets of patterns on at most 2 distinct letters and determine which of them are equally avoided. We also find the exact number of words avoiding certain…
Let $S$ be one of $\{aba,bcb\}$ and $\{aba, aca\}$, and let $w$ be an infinite square-free word over $\Sigma=\{a,b,c\}$ with no factor in $S$. Suppose that $f:\Sigma\rightarrow T^*$ is a non-erasing morphism. Word $f(w)$ is square-free if…
How long can a word be that avoids the unavoidable? Word $W$ encounters word $V$ provided there is a homomorphism $\phi$ defined by mapping letters to nonempty words such that $\phi(V)$ is a subword of $W$. Otherwise, $W$ is said to avoid…
In combinatorics on words, a word $w$ over an alphabet $\Sigma$ is said to avoid a pattern $p$ over an alphabet $\Delta$ if there is no factor $f$ of $w$ such that $f= (p)$ where $h: \Delta^*\to\Sigma^*$ is a non-erasing morphism. A pattern…
We investigate the problem of the maximum number of cubic subwords (of the form $www$) in a given word. We also consider square subwords (of the form $ww$). The problem of the maximum number of squares in a word is not well understood.…
A square is a concatenation of two identical words, and a word $w$ is said to have a square $yy$ if $w$ can be written as $xyyz$ for some words $x$ and $z$. It is known that the ratio of the number of distinct squares in a word to its…
Recently, Grytczuk, Kordulewski, and Niewiadomski defined an extremal word over an alphabet $\mathbb{A}$ to be a word with the property that inserting any letter from $\mathbb{A}$ at any position in the word yields a given pattern. In this…
We construct an infinite word $w$ over the $5$-letter alphabet such that for every factor $f$ of $w$ of length at least two, there exists a cyclic permutation of $f$ that is not a factor of $w$. In other words, $w$ does not contain a…
A finite word $w$ is an abelian square if $w = xx^\prime$ with $x^\prime$ a permutation of $x$. In 1972, Entringer, Jackson, and Schatz proved that every binary word of length $k^2 + 6k$ contains an abelian square of length $\geq 2k$. We…
We re-examine previous constructions of infinite binary words containing few distinct squares with the goal of finding the "simplest", in a certain sense. We exhibit several new constructions. Rather than using tedious case-based arguments…
A pattern is encountered in a word if some infix of the word is the image of the pattern under some non-erasing morphism. A pattern $p$ is unavoidable if, over every finite alphabet, every sufficiently long word encounters $p$. A theorem by…
In combinatorics on words, a word $w$ over an alphabet $\Sigma$ is said to avoid a pattern $p$ over an alphabet $\Delta$ of variables if there is no factor $f$ of $w$ such that $f=h(p)$ where $h:\Delta^*\to\Sigma^*$ is a non-erasing…
The (bitwise) complement $\overline{x}$ of a binary word $x$ is obtained by changing each $0$ in $x$ to $1$ and vice versa. An $\textit{antisquare}$ is a nonempty word of the form $x\, \overline{x}$. In this paper, we study infinite binary…
We consider the following novel variation on a classical avoidance problem from combinatorics on words: instead of avoiding repetitions in all factors of a word, we avoid repetitions in all factors where each individual factor is considered…
A word w is rich if it has |w|+1 many distinct palindromic factors, including the empty word. A word is square-free if it does not have a factor uu, where u is a non-empty word. Pelantov\'a and Starosta (Discrete Math. 313 (2013)) proved…
We say that a word $w$ on a totally ordered alphabet avoids the word $v$ if there are no subsequences in $w$ order-equivalent to $v$. In this paper we suggest a new approach to the enumeration of words on at most $k$ letters avoiding a…