Related papers: Modeling the 15 Tile Puzzle Through the Lens of Gr…
The 15 puzzle is a classic reconfiguration puzzle with fifteen uniquely labeled unit squares within a $4 \times 4$ board in which the goal is to slide the squares (without ever overlapping) into a target configuration. By generalizing the…
We give a proof of Ollinger's conjecture that the problem of tiling the plane with translated copies of a set of $8$ polyominoes is undecidable. The techniques employed in our proof include a different orientation for simulating the Wang…
We study the puzzle graphs of hexagonal sliding puzzles of various shapes and with various numbers of holes. The puzzle graph is a combinatorial model which captures the solvability and the complexity of sequential mechanical puzzles.…
This paper focuses on the undecidability of translational tiling of $n$-dimensional space $\mathbb{Z}^n$ with a set of $k$ tiles. It is known that tiling $\mathbb{Z}^2$ with translated copies with a set of $8$ tiles is undecidable.…
In this paper, we give a proof that it is undecidable whether a set of five polyominoes can tile the plane by translation. The proof involves a new method of labeling the edges of polyominoes, making it possible to assign whether two edges…
Segerman's 15+4 puzzle is a hinged version of the classic 15-puzzle, in which the tiles rotate as they slide around. In 1974, Wilson classified the groups of solutions to sliding block puzzles. We generalize Wilson's result to puzzles like…
The 15-Puzzle is a well studied permutation puzzle. This paper explores the group structure of a three-dimensional variant of the 15-Puzzle known as the Varikon Box, with the goal of providing a heuristic that would help a human solve it…
Does a given a set of polyominoes tile some rectangle? We show that this problem is undecidable. In a different direction, we also consider tiling a cofinite subset of the plane. The tileability is undecidable for many variants of this…
The study of tilings is a major problem in many mathematical instances, which is studied in two main different approaches: when considering the existence (or obstructions to the existence) of a tiling with a given tile and the other…
In this note we use techniques in the topology of 2-complexes to recast some tools that have arisen in the study of planar tiling questions. With spherical pictures we show that the tile counting group associated to a set $T$ of tiles and a…
We construct an example of a group $G = \mathbb{Z}^2 \times G_0$ for a finite abelian group $G_0$, a subset $E$ of $G_0$, and two finite subsets $F_1,F_2$ of $G$, such that it is undecidable in ZFC whether $\mathbb{Z}^2\times E$ can be…
Recall the classical 15-puzzle, consisting of 15 sliding blocks in a $4\times 4$ grid. Famously, the configuration space of this puzzle consists of two connected components, corresponding to the odd and even permutations of the symmetric…
One of the most fundamental problems in tiling theory is the domino problem: given a set of tiles and tiling rules, decide if there exists a way to tile the plane using copies of tiles and following their rules. The problem is known to be…
Translational tiling problems are among the most fundamental and representative undecidable problems in all fields of mathematics. Greenfeld and Tao obtained two remarkable results on the undecidability of translational tiling in recent…
In this paper, we prove that it is undecidable whether a set of two polycubes can tile $\mathbb{Z}^3$ by translation. The proof involves a new technique that allows us to simulate two disconnected polycubes with two connected polycubes. By…
The translational tiling problem, dated back to Wang's domino problem in the 1960s, is one of the most representative undecidable problems in the field of discrete geometry and combinatorics. Ollinger initiated the study of the…
This short survey of recent work in tile self-assembly discusses the use of simulation to classify and separate the computational and expressive power of self-assembly models. The journey begins with the result that there is a single…
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the properties of spectral and tiling subsets of cyclic groups, with an eye towards the spectral set conjecture in one dimension, which states that a bounded measurable subset of $\mathbb{R}$…
Given a tiling of a 2D grid with several types of tiles, we can count for every row and column how many tiles of each type it intersects. These numbers are called the_projections_. We are interested in the problem of reconstructing a tiling…
We introduce a notion of "simulation" for labelled graphs, in which edges of the simulated graph are realized by regular expressions in the simulating graph, and prove that the tiling problem (aka "domino problem") for the simulating graph…