Related papers: Wordle is NP-hard
We consider approximating the minmax value of a multi-player game in strategic form. Tightening recent bounds by Borgs et al., we observe that approximating the value with a precision of epsilon log n digits (for any constant epsilon>0 is…
In this paper we address the solution of the popular Wordle puzzle, using new reinforcement learning methods, which apply more generally to adaptive control of dynamic systems and to classes of Partially Observable Markov Decision Process…
This paper focuses on procedurally generating rules and communicating them to players to adjust the difficulty. This is part of a larger project to collect and adapt games in educational games for young children using a digital puzzle game…
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…
Choosing a hard-to-guess secret is a prerequisite in many security applications. Whether it is a password for user authentication or a secret key for a cryptographic primitive, picking it requires the user to trade-off usability costs with…
We investigate a discrete search game called the Multiple Caching Game where the searcher's aim is to find all of a set of $d$ treasures hidden in $n$ locations. Allowed queries are sets of locations of size $k$, and the searcher wins if in…
Twenty questions is a widely popular verbal game. In recent years, many computerized versions of this game have been developed in which a user thinks of an entity and a computer attempts to guess this entity by asking a series of…
We establish the first hardness results for the problem of computing the value of one-round games played by a verifier and a team of provers who can share quantum entanglement. In particular, we show that it is NP-hard to approximate within…
Constructing effective algorithms to converge to Nash Equilibrium (NE) is an important problem in algorithmic game theory. Prior research generally posits that the upper bound on the convergence rate for games is $O\left(T^{-1/2}\right)$.…
Given a regular language $L$, we study the language of words $\mathsf{D}(L)$, that distinguish between pairs of different left-quotients of $L$. We characterize this distinguishability operation, show that its iteration has always a fixed…
Applying neural network (NN) methods in games can lead to various new and exciting game dynamics not previously possible. However, they also lead to new challenges such as the lack of large, clean datasets, varying player skill levels, and…
We prove the NP-hardness of the problem whether a given word can be derived from a given regular grammar without repeated occurrence of any nonterminal.
Recently, due to the widespread diffusion of smart-phones, mobile puzzle games have experienced a huge increase in their popularity. A successful puzzle has to be both captivating and challenging, and it has been suggested that this…
This note investigates the combinatorics of permutations underlying the NYT daily word game Waffle. It helps to solve Waffle games and helps to understand why some games are easy to solve while others are very hard. It shows that a perfect…
Swish is a card game in which players are given cards having symbols (hoops and balls), and find a valid superposition of cards, called a "swish." Dailly, Lafourcade, and Marcadet (FUN 2024) studied a generalized version of Swish and showed…
Partial words are sequences over a finite alphabet that may contain wildcard symbols, called holes, which match or are compatible with all letters; partial words without holes are said to be full words (or simply words). Given an infinite…
In the past three decades, deductive games have become interesting from the algorithmic point of view. Deductive games are two players zero sum games of imperfect information. The first player, called "codemaker", chooses a secret code and…
Naming game simulates the process of naming an objective by a population of agents organized in a certain communication network topology. By pair-wise iterative interactions, the population reaches a consensus state asymptotically. In this…
Counter reachability games are played by two players on a graph with labelled edges. Each move consists in picking an edge from the current location and adding its label to a counter vector. The objective is to reach a given counter value…
We introduce a generalization of "Solo Chess", a single-player variant of the game that can be played on chess.com. The standard version of the game is played on a regular 8 x 8 chessboard by a single player, with only white pieces, using…