Related papers: Exploring Tetris as a Transformation Semigroup
In the popular computer game of Tetris, the player is given a sequence of tetromino pieces and must pack them into a rectangular gameboard initially occupied by a given configuration of filled squares; any completely filled row of the…
The Sprague-Grundy (SG) theory reduces the sum of impartial games to the classical game of $NIM$. We generalize the concept of sum and introduce $\cH$-combinations of impartial games for any hypergraph $\cH$. In particular, we introduce the…
The game of Tetris is an important benchmark for research in artificial intelligence and machine learning. This paper provides a historical account of the algorithmic developments in Tetris and discusses open challenges. Handcrafted…
We prove that the classic falling-block video game Tetris (both survival and board clearing) remains NP-complete even when restricted to 8 columns, or to 4 rows, settling open problems posed over 15 years ago [BDH+04]. Our reduction is from…
We analyze the computational complexity of Tetris clearing (determining whether the player can clear an initial board using a given sequence of pieces) and survival (determining whether the player can avoid losing before placing all the…
We prove NP-hardness and #P-hardness of Tetris clearing (clearing an initial board using a given sequence of pieces) with the Super Rotation System (SRS), even when the pieces are limited to any two of the seven Tetris piece types. This…
The mathematical aspects of the popular logic game Sudoku incorporate a significant number of the group theory concepts. In this note, we describe all symmetric transformations of the Sudoku grid. We do not intend to obtain a new strategy…
Given a hypergraph $\cH \subseteq 2^I \setminus \{\emptyset\}$ on the ground set $I = \{1, \ldots, n\}$, we assign to each $i \in I$ a nonnegative integer $x_i$, that is a pile of $x_i$ tokens, and consider the following generalization of…
In this paper we are going to solve an open problem about the game tetris. We are going to give the first results in the complexity of a variant of offline tetris introduced by Erik Demaine, Susan Hohenberger and David Liben Nowell in their…
Tetris Block Puzzle is a single player stochastic puzzle in which a player places blocks on an 8 x 8 grid to complete lines; its popular variants have amassed tens of millions of downloads. Despite this reach, there is little principled…
Tetravex is a widely played one person computer game in which you are given $n^2$ unit tiles, each edge of which is labelled with a number. The objective is to place each tile within a $n$ by $n$ square such that all neighbouring edges are…
In areas as diverse as contemporary art, play structures, climbing equipment, and modular construction toys, we see the presence of building block-like polyhedral complexes, which are generalizations of the pieces in the game Tetris. We…
We study the complexity of a particular class of board games, which we call `slide and merge' games. Namely, we consider 2048 and Threes, which are among the most popular games of their type. In both games, the player is required to slide…
Petri games are a multi-player game model for the automatic synthesis of distributed systems, where the players are represented as tokens on a Petri net and are grouped into environment players and system players. As long as the players…
In combinatorial game theory, the winning player for a position in normal play is analyzed and characterized via algebraic operations. Such analyses define a value for each position, called a game value. A game (ruleset) is called universal…
By resorting to the vector space structure of finite games, skew-symmetric games (SSGs) are proposed and investigated as a natural subspace of finite games. First of all, for two player games, it is shown that the skew-symmetric games form…
We analyze the computational complexity of two 2-player games involving packing objects into a box. In the first game, players alternate drawing polycubes from a shared pile and placing them into an initially empty box in any available…
The prisoner's dilemma (PD) is a game-theoretic model studied in a wide array of fields to understand the emergence of cooperation between rational self-interested agents. In this work, we formulate a spatial iterated PD as a discrete-event…
In recent papers, Margolis, Rhodes and Schilling proved that the complexity of a finite semigroup is computable. This solved a problem that had been open for more than 50 years. The purpose of this paper is to survey the basic results of…
Subtraction games is a class of combinatorial games. It was solved since the Sprague-Grundy Theory was put forward. This paper described a new algorithm for subtraction games. The new algorithm can find win or lost positions in subtraction…