Related papers: Circularly squarefree words and unbordered conjuga…
We characterize binary words that have exactly two unbordered conjugates and show that they can be expressed as a product of two palindromes.
Let $u \shuffle v$ denote the set of all shuffles of the words $u$ and $v$. It is shown that for each integer $n \geq 3$ there exists a square-free ternary word $u$ of length $n$ such that $u\shuffle u$ contains a square-free word. This…
We characterize the squares occurring in infinite overlap-free binary words and construct various alpha power-free binary words containing infinitely many overlaps.
We study words that barely avoid repetitions, for several senses of "barely". A squarefree (respectively, overlap-free, cubefree) word is irreducible if removing any one of its interior letters creates a square (respectively, overlap,…
An unconstrained crossword puzzle is a generalization of the constrained crossword problem. In this problem, only the word vocabulary, and optionally the grid dimensions are known. Hence, it not only requires the algorithm to determine the…
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.
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…
In a recent paper, Harju posed three open problems concerning square-free arithmetic progressions in infinite words. In this note we solve two of them.
Circular words are cyclically ordered finite sequences of letters. We give a computer-free proof of the following result by Currie: square-free circular words over the ternary alphabet exist for all lengths $l$ except for 5, 7, 9, 10, 14,…
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…
The study of rational relations is fundamental to the study of formal languages and automata theory. A rational relation is conjugate if each pair of words in the relation is conjugate (or cyclic shifts of each other). The notion of…
In a recent paper, one of us posed three open problems concerning squarefree arithmetic progressions in infinite words. In this note we solve these problems and prove some additional results.
In this paper we propose an algorithm to generate binary words with no more 0's than 1's having a fixed number of 1's and avoiding the pattern $(10)^j1$ for any fixed $j \geq 1$. We will prove that this generation is exhaustive, that is,…
We start by considering binary words containing the minimum possible numbers of squares and antisquares (where an antisquare is a word of the form $x \overline{x}$), and we completely classify which possibilities can occur. We consider…
A word is square-free if it does not contain nonempty factors of the form $XX$. In 1906 Thue proved that there exist arbitrarily long square-free words over a $3$-letter alphabet. It was proved recently [7] that among these words there are…
We show that the number of length-n words over a k-letter alphabet having no even palindromic prefix is the same as the number of length-n unbordered words, by constructing an explicit bijection between the two sets. A slightly different…
Building an infinite square-free word by appending one letter at a time while simultaneously avoiding the creation of squares is most likely to fail. When the alphabet has two letters this approach is impossible. When the alphabet has three…
We develop a new tool, namely polynomial and linear algebraic methods, for studying systems of word equations. We illustrate its usefulness by giving essentially simpler proofs of several hard problems. At the same time we prove extensions…
We consider three aspects of avoiding large squares in infinite binary words. First, we construct an infinite binary word avoiding both cubes xxx and squares yy with |y| >= 4; our construction is somewhat simpler than the original…
A word is square-free if it does not contain a nonempty word of the form $XX$ as a factor. A famous 1906 result of Thue asserts that there exist arbitrarily long square-free words over a $3$-letter alphabet. We study square-free words with…