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Related papers: Strings-and-Coins and Nimstring are PSPACE-complet…

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Given a graph $G$, a set $S$ of vertices in $G$ is a general position set if no triple of vertices from $S$ lie on a common shortest path in $G$. The general position achievement/avoidance game is played on a graph $G$ by players A and B…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-09-14 Ullas Chandran S. V. , Sandi Klavzar , Neethu P. K. , Rudini Sampaio

The game of Paintbucket was recently introduced by Amundsen and Erickson. It is played on a rectangular grid of black and white pixels. The players alternately fill in one of their opponent's connected components with their own color, until…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-12-02 Ethan J. Saunders , Peter Selinger

We prove NP-completeness of Yin-Yang / Shiromaru-Kuromaru pencil-and-paper puzzles. Viewed as a graph partitioning problem, we prove NP-completeness of partitioning a rectangular grid graph into two induced trees (normal Yin-Yang), or into…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2021-06-30 Erik D. Demaine , Jayson Lynch , Mikhail Rudoy , Yushi Uno

In this paper, we show that the friends-and-strangers problem is PSPACE-complete by reduction from the Ncl (non-deterministic constraint logic) problem.

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-03-20 Chao Yang , Zhujun Zhang

The concept of nimbers--a.k.a. Grundy-values or nim-values--is fundamental to combinatorial game theory. Nimbers provide a complete characterization of strategic interactions among impartial games in their disjunctive sums as well as the…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2022-02-24 Kyle Burke , Matthew Ferland , Shanghua Teng

We prove that Balanced Biclique Reconfiguration on bipartite graphs is PSPACE-complete. This implies the PSPACE-completeness of the spanning variant of Subgraph Reconfiguration under the token jumping rule for the property "a graph is an…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Yota Otachi , Emi Toyoda

We show that Mis\`ere Partizan Arc Kayles is PSPACE-complete on planar graphs via a reduction from Bounded Two-Player Constraint Logic. Furthermore, we show how to embed our gadgets onto the square and triangular grids. In order to clearly…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2025-12-01 Kyle Burke , Caroline Cashman , Alfie Davies , Kanae Yoshiwatari , Francesca Yu

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…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2019-11-19 Oliver Korten

We demonstrate that Col is PSPACE-complete on triangular grid graphs via a reduction from Bounded Two-Player Constraint Logic. This is the most structured graph family that Col is known to be computationally hard for.

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2025-01-28 Kyle Burke , Craig Tennenhouse

We study the algorithmic complexity of Maker-Breaker games played on the edge sets of general graphs. We mainly consider the perfect matching game and the $H$-game. Maker wins if she claims the edges of a perfect matching in the first, and…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2024-11-18 Eric Duchêne , Valentin Gledel , Fionn Mc Inerney , Nicolas Nisse , Nacim Oijid , Aline Parreau , Miloš Stojaković

The game domination number is a graph invariant that arises from a game, which is related to graph domination in a similar way as the game chromatic number is related to graph coloring. In this paper we show that verifying whether the game…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-06-20 Boštjan Brešar , Paul Dorbec , Sandi Klavžar , Gašper Košmrlj , Gabriel Renault

We study the following combinatorial game played by two players, Alice and Bob, which generalizes the Pizza game considered by Brown, Winkler and others. Given a connected graph G with nonnegative weights assigned to its vertices, the…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2013-08-07 Josef Cibulka , Jan Kynčl , Viola Mészáros , Rudolf Stolař , Pavel Valtr

We investigate the Dots and Boxes game, also known as ``Strings and Coins,'' for certain specific families of graphs. These include complete graphs, wheel graphs, and friendship graphs.

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-08-18 Vedant Aryan , Alana Palmer , Alexander Skula , Matthew Woolbert , Joshua Zelinsky

We consider the following modification of annihilation game called node blocking. Given a directed graph, each vertex can be occupied by at most one token. There are two types of tokens, each player can move his type of tokens. The players…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-03-05 Dariusz Dereniowski

The connected domination game is a variation of the domination game where the played vertices must form a connected subgraph at all stages of the game. In this paper we prove that deciding whether the game connected domination number is…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-06-02 Vesna Iršič Chenoweth

We investigate the complexity of finding a winning strategy for the mis\`ere version of three games played on graphs : two variants of the game $\text{NimG}$, introduced by Stockmann in 2004 and the game $\text{Vertex Geography}$ on both…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2015-05-05 Gabriel Renault , Simon Schmidt

Numerous popular abstract strategy games ranging from Hex and Havannah to Lines of Action belong to the class of connection games. Still, very few complexity results on such games have been obtained since Hex was proved PSPACE-complete in…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2014-03-27 Edouard Bonnet , Florian Jamain , Abdallah Saffidine

We show that the Minesweeper game is PP-hard, when the object is to locate all mines with the highest probability. When the probability of locating all mines may be infinitesimal, the Minesweeper game is even PSPACE-complete. In our…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2012-04-23 Michiel de Bondt

We verify a conjecture of Nowakowski and Ottaway that closed $1 \times n$ Dots-and-Triangles is a first-player win when $n \neq 2$. We also prove that in both the open and closed $1 \times n$ Dots-and-Boxes games where $n$ is even, the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-08-03 Adam Jobson , Levi Sledd , Susan C. White , D. Jacob Wildstrom

Given a c-colored graph G, a vertex of G is happy if it has the same color as all its neighbors. The notion of happy vertices was introduced by Zhang and Li to compute the homophily of a graph. Eto, et al. introduced the Maker-Maker version…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2026-01-13 Mathieu Hilaire , Perig Montfort , Nacim Oijid