Related papers: Nondango is NP-Complete
We consider the problem of deciding, given a sequence of regions, if there is a choice of points, one for each region, such that the induced polyline is simple or weakly simple, meaning that it can touch but not cross itself. Specifically,…
The input to the no-rainbow hypergraph coloring problem is a hypergraph $H$ where every hyperedge has $r$ nodes. The question is whether there exists an $r$-coloring of the nodes of $H$ such that all $r$ colors are used and there is no…
In this paper we show that the following problem is NP-complete: Given an alphabet $\Sigma$ and two strings over $\Sigma$, the question is whether there exists a permutation of $\Sigma$ which is a subsequence of both of the given strings.
Using the notion of visibility representations, our paper establishes a new property of instances of the Nondeterministic Constraint Logic (NCL) problem (a PSPACE-complete problem that is very convenient to prove the PSPACE-hardness of…
We present and analyze PackIt!, a turn-based game consisting of packing rectangles on an $n \times n$ grid. PackIt! can be easily played on paper, either as a competitive two-player game or in \emph{solitaire} fashion. On the $t$-th turn, a…
A squarefree word is a sequence $w$ of symbols such that there are no strings $x, y$, and $z$ for which $w=xyyz$. A nonrepetitive coloring of a graph is an edge coloring in which the sequence of colors along any open path is squarefree. We…
Let $G = (V,E)$ be a finite simple graph. Recall that a proper coloring of $G$ is a mapping $\varphi: V\to\{1,\ldots,k\}$ such that every color class induces an independent set. Such a $\varphi$ is called a semi-matching coloring if the…
We prove that Strings-and-Coins -- the combinatorial two-player game generalizing the dual of Dots-and-Boxes -- is strongly PSPACE-complete on multigraphs. This result improves the best previous result, NP-hardness, argued in Winning Ways.…
Consider the plane as a checkerboard, with each unit square colored black or white in an arbitrary manner. In a previous paper we showed that for any such coloring there are straight line segments, of arbitrarily large length, such that the…
Finding actions that satisfy the constraints imposed by both external inputs and internal representations is central to decision making. We demonstrate that some important classes of constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) can be solved by…
A (complete) matching of the cells of a triangulated manifold can be thought as a combinatorial or discrete version of a nonsingular vector field. We give several methods for constructing such matchings.
We prove that the classic falling-block video game Tetris (both survival and board clearing) remains NP-complete even when restricted to 8 columns, or to 4 rows, settling open problems posed over 15 years ago [BDH+04]. Our reduction is from…
Arrangements of pseudolines are a widely studied generalization of line arrangements. They are defined as a finite family of infinite curves in the Euclidean plane, any two of which intersect at exactly one point. One can state various…
Immanants are polynomial functions of n by n matrices attached to irreducible characters of the symmetric group S_n, or equivalently to Young diagrams of size n. Immanants include determinants and permanents as extreme cases. Valiant proved…
We suggest a diagrammatic model of computation based on an axiom of distributivity. A diagram of a decorated coloured tangle, similar to those that appear in low dimensional topology, plays the role of a circuit diagram. Equivalent diagrams…
Let $S$ be a connected graph which contains an induced path of $n-1$ vertices, where $n$ is the order of $S.$ We consider a puzzle on $S$. A configuration of the puzzle is simply an $n$-dimensional column vector over $\{0, 1\}$ with…
We prove that a particular pushing-blocks puzzle is intractable in 3D. The puzzle, inspired by the game PushPush, consists of unit square blocks on an integer lattice. An agent may push blocks (but never pull them) in attempting to move…
Continuing results from JCDCGGG 2016 and 2017, we solve several new cases of the simple foldability problem -- deciding which crease patterns can be folded flat by a sequence of (some model of) simple folds. We give new efficient algorithms…
This article addresses the solvability of the multi-dimensional divergence-curl problem with a no-slip boundary condition. A solvability criterion is derived as an orthogonality condition of the vorticity function to pseudo-harmonic fields.…
A coloring of vertices of a given graph is called perfect if the color structure of each ball of radius $1$ in the graph depends only on the color of the ball center. Let $n$ be a positive integer. We consider a lexicographic product of the…