Related papers: The Game of Cycles
The Game of Cycles is a combinatorial game introduced by Francis Su in 2020 in which players take turns marking arrows on the edges of a simple plane graph, avoiding the creation of sinks and sources and seeking to complete a "cycle cell."…
We are investigating who has the winning strategy in a game in which two players take turns drawing arrows trying to complete cycle cells in a graph. A cycle cell is a cycle with no chords. We examine game boards where the winning strategy…
The Game of Cycles is a two-player impartial mathematical game, introduced by Francis Su in his book Mathematics for Human Flourishing (2020). The game is played on simple planar graphs in which players take turns marking edges using a…
The Game of Cycles is an impartial game on a planar graph that was introduced by Francis Su. In this short note we address some questions that have been raised on the game, and raise some further questions.
In this paper, we introduce a variant of Francis Su's "Game of Cycles," that we call "Cycles with Sources." The only change to the rules is permitting nodes to be sources, while sinks are still prohibited. Despite this minor change in the…
We define the Sign Game as a two-player game played on a simple undirected mathematical graph $G$. The players alternate turns, assigning vertices of $G$ either $1$ or $-1$, and edges take on the value of the product of their endvertices.…
We consider a simple game, the $k$-regular graph game, in which players take turns adding edges to an initially empty graph subject to the constraint that the degrees of vertices cannot exceed $k$. We show a sharp topological threshold for…
We introduce a topological combinatorial game called the Link Smoothing Game. The game is played on the shadow of a link diagram and legal moves consist of smoothing precrossings. One player's goal is to keep the diagram connected while the…
In this expository paper we present some ideas of algebraic topology (more precisely, of homology theory) in a language accessible to non-specialists in the area. A $1$-cycle in a graph is a set $C$ of edges such that every vertex is…
We introduce a new two-player game on graphs, in which players alternate choosing vertices until the set of chosen vertices forms a dominating set. The last player to choose a vertex is the winner. The game fits into the scheme of several…
Consider the following game played by Maker and Breaker on the vertices of the cycle $C_{n}$, with first move given to Breaker. The aim of Maker is to maximise the number of adjacent pairs of vertices that are both claimed by her, and the…
We introduce Shortest Connection Game, a two-player game played on a directed graph with edge costs. Given two designated vertices in which they start, the players take turns in choosing edges emanating from the vertex they are currently…
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 introduce a new positional game called `Toucher-Isolator', which is a quantitative version of a Maker-Breaker type game. The playing board is the set of edges of a given graph G, and the two players, Toucher and Isolator, claim edges…
We introduce a topological combinatorial game called the Region Smoothing Swap Game. The game is played on a game board derived from the connected shadow of a link diagram on a (possibly non-orientable) surface by smoothing at crossings.…
This document presents the rules of a tactical two-player board game which is inspired by spin glasses. The aim is, while placing bonds and spins, to achieve a majority of the spins facing the chosen direction of each player. The game has…
Players are arranged on a regular lattice and coded with a specific strategy for a pre-defined game. Each player sums their payoffs from playing the game with each of their neighbors, and then adopts the strategy of the most successful…
We consider a search and rescue game introduced recently by the first author. An immobile target or targets (for example, injured hikers) are hidden on a graph. The terrain is assumed to dangerous, so that when any given vertex of the graph…
In this paper, we introduce a graph coloring game called the Edge-Distinguishing Game (EDGe). The edge-distinguishing chromatic number of a graph is used to determine the moves each player can make. We determine which player has a winning…
We investigate the combinatorial game Slime Trail.This game is played on a graph with a starting piece in a node. Each player's objective is to reach one of their own goal nodes. Every turn the current player moves the piece and deletes the…