Related papers: On the Computational Complexity of Generalized Com…
Tiling planar regions with dominoes is a classical problem in which the decision and counting problems are polynomial. We prove a variety of hardness results (both NP- and #P-completeness) for different generalizations of dominoes in three…
We study the problem of folding a polyomino $P$ into a polycube $Q$, allowing faces of $Q$ to be covered multiple times. First, we define a variety of folding models according to whether the folds (a) must be along grid lines of $P$ or can…
We study the complexity of symmetric assembly puzzles: given a collection of simple polygons, can we translate, rotate, and possibly flip them so that their interior-disjoint union is line symmetric? On the negative side, we show that the…
A polyomino is a polygonal region with axis parallel edges and corners of integral coordinates, which may have holes. In this paper, we consider planar tiling and packing problems with polyomino pieces and a polyomino container $P$. We give…
Various forms of sorting problems have been studied over the years. Recently, two kinds of sorting puzzle apps are popularized. In these puzzles, we are given a set of bins filled with colored units, balls or water, and some empty bins.…
We consider the average-case complexity of some otherwise undecidable or open Diophantine problems. More precisely, we show that the following two problems can be solved in the complexity class PSPACE: (I) Given polynomials f_1,...,f_m in…
In this paper we investigate computational properties of the Diophantine problem for spherical equations in some classes of finite groups. We classify the complexity of different variations of the problem, e.g., when $G$ is fixed and when…
This work explores the relationship between solution space and time complexity in the context of the $\textbf{P}$ vs. $\textbf{NP}$ problem, particularly through the lens of the sliding tile puzzle and root finding algorithms. We focus on…
We show that the problem to decide whether two (convex) polytopes, given by their vertex-facet incidences, are combinatorially isomorphic is graph isomorphism complete, even for simple or simplicial polytopes. On the other hand, we give a…
The author presents two tricks to accelerate depth-first search algorithms for a class of combinatorial puzzle problems, such as tiling a tray by a fixed set of polyominoes. The first trick is to implement each assumption of the search with…
Which polyominoes can be folded into a cube, using only creases along edges of the square lattice underlying the polyomino, with fold angles of $\pm 90^\circ$ and $\pm 180^\circ$, and allowing faces of the cube to be covered multiple times?…
We analyze the computational complexity of several new variants of edge-matching puzzles. First we analyze inequality (instead of equality) constraints between adjacent tiles, proving the problem NP-complete for strict inequalities but…
We generalize our puzzle formula for ordinary Schubert calculus on Grassmannians, to a formula for the T-equivariant Schubert calculus. The structure constants to be calculated are polynomials in {y_{i+1} - y_i}; they were shown…
Polyominoes are a subset of polygons which can be constructed from integer-length squares fused at their edges. A system of polygons P is interlocked if no subset of the polygons in P can be removed arbitrarily far away from the rest. It is…
Based on a previous generalization by the author of Latin squares to Latin boards, this paper generalizes partial Latin squares and related objects like partial Latin squares, completable partial Latin squares and Latin square puzzles. The…
We study decision problems on geometric tilings. First, we study a variant of the Domino problem where square tiles are replaced by geometric tiles of arbitrary shape. We show that this variant is undecidable regardless of the shapes,…
Given a periodic placement of copies of a tromino (either L or I), we prove co-RE-completeness (and hence undecidability) of deciding whether it can be completed to a plane tiling. By contrast, the problem becomes decidable if the initial…
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…
We study the functional equation $A\circ X=X\circ B$, where $A,$ $B$, and $X$ are polynomials over $\mathbb C$. Using previous results of the author about polynomials sharing preimages of compact sets, we show that for given $B$ its…
We announce two breakthrough results concerning important questions in the Theory of Computational Complexity. In this expository paper, a systematic and comprehensive geometric characterization of the Subset Sum Problem is presented. We…