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We study the localization game on dense random graphs. In this game, a {\em cop} $x$ tries to locate a {\em robber} $y$ by asking for the graph distance of $y$ from every vertex in a sequence of sets $W_1,W_2,\ldots,W_\ell$. We prove high…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-05-16 Andrzej Dudek , Alan Frieze , Wesley Pegden

In the game of cops and robber, the cops try to capture a robber moving on the vertices of the graph. The minimum number of cops required to win on a given graph $G$ is called the cop number of $G$. The biggest open conjecture in this area…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-12-12 Pawel Pralat , Nick Wormald

We investigate extremal graphs related to the game of Cops and Robbers. We focus on graphs where a single cop can catch the robber; such graphs are called cop-win. The capture time of a cop-win graph is the minimum number of moves the cop…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-03-21 David Offner , Kerry Ojakian

In the classic cop and robber game, two players--the cop and the robber--take turns moving to a neighboring vertex or staying at their current position. The cop aims to capture the robber, while the robber tries to evade capture. A graph…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-02-17 Tanja Dravec , Vesna Iršič Chenoweth , Andrej Taranenko

Meyniel's conjecture states that $n$-vertex connected graphs have cop number $O(\sqrt{n})$. The current best known upper bound is $n/2^{(1-o(1))\sqrt{\log n}}$, proved independently by Lu and Peng (2011), and by Scott and Sudakov (2011). In…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-02-10 Prosenjit Bose , Louis Esperet , Jędrzej Hodor , Gwenaël Joret , Piotr Micek , Clément Rambaud

"Zombies and Survivor" is a variant of the well-studied game of "Cops and Robber" where the zombies (cops) can only move closer to the survivor (robber). We consider the deterministic version of the game where a zombie can choose their path…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-06-04 Valentin Bartier , Laurine Bénéteau , Marthe Bonamy , Hoang La , Jonathan Narboni

In this paper we analyze and model three open problems posed by Harris, Insko, Prieto-Langarica, Stoisavljevic, and Sullivan in 2020 concerning the tipsy cop and robber game on graphs. The three different scenarios we model account for…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-03-01 Viktoriya Bardenova , Vincent Ciarcia , Erik Insko

In this paper, we answer two open problems from [Breen et al., Throttling for the game of Cops and Robbers on graphs, Discrete Math., 341 (2018) 2418-2430]. The throttling number $th_c(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the minimum possible value of $k…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-10-23 Jesse Geneson

We consider the cops and robber game variant consisting of one cop and one robber on time-varying graphs (TVG). The considered TVGs are edge periodic graphs, i.e., for each edge, a binary string $s_e$ determines in which time step the edge…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2021-07-13 Nils Morawietz , Petra Wolf

A gambler moves on the vertices $1, \ldots, n$ of a graph using the probability distribution $p_{1}, \ldots, p_{n}$. A cop pursues the gambler on the graph, only being able to move between adjacent vertices. What is the expected number of…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2017-01-09 Jesse Geneson

We study the zero-visibility cops and robbers game, where the robber is invisible to the cops until they are caught. This differs from the classic game where full information about the robber's location is known at any time. A previously…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2025-09-08 Igor Potapov , Tymofii Prokopenko , John Sylvester

In this paper, we study different variants of the Cops-and-Robber game with respect to cop- and robber\-/monotonicity. We study a visible and invisible robber and variants where the robber is lazy, thus can only move when the cops announce…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2025-02-24 Eva Fluck , David Philipps

The main topic of this paper is motivated by a localization problem in cellular networks. Given a graph $G$ we want to localize a walking agent by checking his distance to as few vertices as possible. The model we introduce is based on a…

We show that the cop number of every generalized Petersen graph is at most 4. The strategy is to play a modified game of cops and robbers on an infinite cyclic covering space where the objective is to capture the robber or force the robber…

In this note, we prove that all cop-win graphs G in the game in which the robber and the cop move at different speeds s and s' with s'<s, are \delta-hyperbolic with \delta=O(s^2). We also show that the dependency between \delta and s is…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-12-12 Jérémie Chalopin , Victor Chepoi , Panos Papasoglu , Timothée Pecatte

We show that the expected time for a smart "cop" to catch a drunk "robber" on an $n$-vertex graph is at most $n + {\rm o}(n)$. More precisely, let $G$ be a simple, connected, undirected graph with distinguished points $u$ and $v$ among its…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-11-05 Natasha Komarov , Peter Winkler

We define new graph parameters, called flip-width, that generalize treewidth, degeneracy, and generalized coloring numbers for sparse graphs, and clique-width and twin-width for dense graphs. The flip-width parameters are defined using…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-03-26 Szymon Toruńczyk

In 2019, Sivaraman conjectured that every $P_k$-free graph has cop number at most $k-3$. In the same year, Liu proved this conjecture for $(P_k,\text{claw})$-free graphs. Recently Chudnovsky, Norin, Seymour, and Turcotte proved this…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-09-16 Alexander Clow , Erin Meger

We show that the cop number of any graph on 18 or fewer vertices is at most 3. This answers a question posed by Andreae in 1986, as well as more recently by Baird et al. We also find all 3-cop-win graphs on 11 vertices, narrow down the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-10-29 Jérémie Turcotte , Samuel Yvon

The deduction game is a variation of the game of cops and robber on graphs in which searchers must capture an invisible evader in at most one move. Searchers know each others' initial locations, but can only communicate if they are on the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-12-24 Andrea Burgess , Danny Dyer , Mozhgan Farahani