Related papers: On the Frame-Stewart Conjecture
The objective of the well-known Towers of Hanoi puzzle is to move a set of disks one at a time from one of a set of pegs to another, while keeping the disks sorted on each peg. We propose an adversarial variation in which the first player…
We introduce and study a new four-peg variant of the Tower of Hanoi problem under parity constraints. Two pegs are neutral and allow arbitrary disc placements, while the remaining two pegs are restricted to discs of a prescribed parity: one…
A parallel variant of the Tower of Hanoi Puzzle is described herein. Within this parallel context, two theorems on minimal walks in the state space of configurations, along with their constructive proofs, are provided. These proofs are used…
In this work I study a modified Tower of Hanoi puzzle, which I term Magnetic Tower of Hanoi (MToH). The original Tower of Hanoi puzzle, invented by the French mathematician Edouard Lucas in 1883, spans "base 2". That is - the number of…
We develop a unified algebraic theory of the weighted Tower of Hanoi with arbitrary nonnegative symmetric move costs depending on both disc index and pegs. Starting from a general optimality recurrence with two competing strategies -- one…
The game of the Towers of Hanoi is generalized to binary trees. First, a straightforward solution of the game is discussed. Second, a shorter solution is presented, which is then shown to be optimal.
L. Kauffman conjectured that a particular solution of the Chinese Rings puzzle is the simplest possible. We prove his conjecture by using low-dimensional topology and group theory. We notice also a surprising connection between the Chinese…
The picture-hanging puzzle, popularized by Demaine et al. (2014), asks for a way to wrap a wire around $n$ nails such that the picture hangs as long as fewer than $k$ nails are removed, but falls as soon as any $k$ are removed. Solutions…
A picture-hanging puzzle is the task of hanging a framed picture with a wire around a set of nails in such a way that it can remain hanging on certain specified sets of nails, but will fall if any more are removed. The classical brain…
We consider the problem of determining the minimum number of moves needed to solve a certain one-dimensional peg puzzle. Let N be a positive integer. The puzzle apparatus consists of a block with a single row of 2N+1 equally spaced holes…
The Magnetic Tower of Hanoi puzzle - a modified "base 3" version of the classical Tower of Hanoi puzzle as described in earlier papers, is actually a small set of independent sister-puzzles, depending on the "pre-coloring" combination of…
The minimum constraint removal problem seeks to find the minimum number of constraints, i.e., obstacles, that need to be removed to connect a start to a goal location with a collision-free path. This problem is NP-hard and has been studied…
We give a lower estimate of the framing function of knots, and prove a strengthened version of Dehn's lemma conjectured by Greene-Wiest.
We prove that elements of the Hanoi Towers groups $\mathcal{H}_m$ have depth bounded from above by a poly-logarithmic function $O(\log^{m-2} n)$, where $n$ is the length of an element. Therefore the word problem in groups $\mathcal{H}_m$ is…
We consider the Minimum Convex Partition problem: Given a set P of n points in the plane, draw a plane graph G on P, with positive minimum degree, such that G partitions the convex hull of P into a minimum number of convex faces. We show…
We study the problem of determining whether a given frame is scalable, and when it is, understanding the set of all possible scalings. We show that for most frames this is a relatively simple task in that the frame is either not scalable or…
The displacement of a parking function measures the total difference between where cars want to park and where they ultimately park. In this article, we prove that the set of parking functions of length $n$ with displacement one is in…
The McCarty Conjecture states that any McCarty Matrix (an $n\times n$ matrix $A$ with positive integer entries and each of the $2n$ row and column sums equal to $n$), can be additively decomposed into two other matrices, $B$ and $C$, such…
Motivated by an amazing integrality structure conjecture for the $U(N)$ Chern-Simons quantum invariants of framed knots investigated by Mari\~no and Vafa, a new conjectural formula, named Hecke lifting conjecture, was proposed in…
Two decades ago, Zauner conjectured that for every dimension $d$, there exists an equiangular tight frame consisting of $d^2$ vectors in $\mathbb{C}^d$. Most progress to date explicitly constructs the promised frame in various dimensions,…