Related papers: The Simplest Binary Word with Only Three Squares
We consider words over a binary alphabet. A word $w$ is overlap-free if it does not have factors (blocks of consecutive letters) of the form $uvuvu$ for nonempty $u$. Let $M(w)$ denote the number of positions that are middle positions of…
We consider avoiding squares and overlaps over the natural numbers, using a greedy algorithm that chooses the least possible integer at each step; the word generated is lexicographically least among all such infinite words. In the case of…
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,…
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…
An efficient, when compared to exhaustive enumeration, algorithm for computing the number of square-free words of length $n$ over the alphabet $\{a, b, c\}$ is presented.
We study infinite binary words that contain few distinct palindromes. In particular, we classify such words according to their critical exponents. This extends results by Fici and Zamboni [TCS 2013]. Interestingly, the words with 18 and 20…
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 consider words $w$ over the alphabet $\Sigma=\{0,1,2\}$. It is shown that there are irreducibly square-free words of all lengths $n$ except 4,5,7 and 12. Such a word is square-free (i.e., it has no repetitions $uu$ as factors), but by…
We study the avoidability of long $k$-abelian-squares and $k$-abelian-cubes on binary and ternary alphabets. For $k=1$, these are M\"akel\"a's questions. We show that one cannot avoid abelian-cubes of abelian period at least $2$ in infinite…
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…
We present a method to simplify expressions in the context of an equational theory. The basic ideas and concepts of the method have been presented previously elsewhere but here we tackle the difficult task of making it efficient in…
A tangram is a word in which every letter occurs an even number of times. Thus it can be cut into parts that can be arranged into two identical words. The \emph{cut number} of a tangram is the minimum number of required cuts in this…
Walnut is a software that using automata can prove theorems in combinatorics on words about automatic sequences. We are able to apply this software to both prove new results as well as reprove some old results on avoiding squares and cubes…
We construct words with small image in a given finite alternating or unimodular group. This shows that word width in these groups is unbounded in general.
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…
The aim of this note is to introduce fastest new general methods for the construction of double and single even order magic squares. As in [5], the method for double even order magic squares is fairly straight-forward but some adjustments…
Richomme asked the following question: what is the infimum of the real numbers $\alpha$ > 2 such that there exists an infinite word that avoids $\alpha$-powers but contains arbitrarily large squares beginning at every position? We resolve…
Fraenkel and Simpson showed that the number of distinct squares in a word of length n is bounded from above by 2n, since at most two distinct squares have their rightmost, or last, occurrence begin at each position. Improvements by Ilie to…
We prove that every concatenation of $10$ or more binary squares contains an overlap. The bound $10$ is best possible. In contrast, over a ternary alphabet, there are infinitely long overlap-free words that consist of a concatenation of…
In 1976, Dekking showed that there exists an infinite binary word that contains neither squares yy with y >= 4 nor cubes xxx. We show that `cube' can be replaced by any fractional power > 5/2. We also consider the analogous problem where…