Related papers: On the Number of Non-equivalent Parameterized Squa…

We generalise our earlier work on the number of squares in binary recurrence sequences, $\left\{ y_{k} \right\}_{k \geq -\infty}$. In the notation of our previous papers, here we consider the case when $N_{\alpha}$ is any negative integer…

Let $S_n$ denote a symmetric group, $\chi$ an irreducible character of $S_n$, and $g\in S_n$ an element which decomposes into $k$ disjoint cycles, where $1$-cycles are included. Then $|\chi(g)|\le k!$, and this upper bound is sharp for…

A string $S[1,n]$ is a power (or tandem repeat) of order $k$ and period $n/k$ if it can decomposed into $k$ consecutive equal-length blocks of letters. Powers and periods are fundamental to string processing, and algorithms for their…

Let $\Sigma$ be an alphabet. For two strings $X$, $Y$, and a constrained string $P$ over the alphabet $\Sigma$, the constrained longest common subsequence and substring problem for two strings $X$ and $Y$ with respect to $P$ is to find a…

We describe a new non-constructive technique to show that squares are avoidable by an infinite word even if we force some letters from the alphabet to appear at certain occurrences. We show that as long as forced positions are at distance…

In 2007, Grytczuk conjecture that for any sequence $(\ell_i)_{i\ge1}$ of alphabets of size $3$ there exists a square-free infinite word $w$ such that for all $i$, the $i$-th letter of $w$ belongs to $\ell_i$. The result of Thue of 1906…

We introduce the natural notion of a matching frame in a $2$-dimensional string. A matching frame in a $2$-dimensional $n\times m$ string $M$, is a rectangle such that the strings written on the horizontal sides of the rectangle are…

A finite word $w$ is an abelian square if $w = xx^\prime$ with $x^\prime$ a permutation of $x$. In 1972, Entringer, Jackson, and Schatz proved that every binary word of length $k^2 + 6k$ contains an abelian square of length $\geq 2k$. We…

An irreducible character $\chi$ of an association scheme is called nonlinear if the multiplicity of $\chi$ is greater than $1$. The main result of this paper gives a characterization of commutative association schemes with at most two…

In the Shortest Superstring problem we are given a set of strings $S=\{s_1, \ldots, s_n\}$ and integer $\ell$ and the question is to decide whether there is a superstring $s$ of length at most $\ell$ containing all strings of $S$ as…

A tangram is a word in which every letter occurs an even number of times. Thus it can be cut into parts that can be arranged into two identical words. The \emph{cut number} of a tangram is the minimum number of required cuts in this…

The main goal of this paper is to address the following problem: given a positive integer $n$, find the largest value $S(n)$ such that a square of edge length $S(n)$ in the Euclidean plane can be covered by $n$ unit squares. We investigate…

We prove that for every $\epsilon>0$ and predicate $P:\{0,1\}^k\rightarrow \{0,1\}$ that supports a pairwise independent distribution, there exists an instance $\mathcal{I}$ of the $\mathsf{Max}P$ constraint satisfaction problem on $n$…

A string is closed if it has length 1 or has a nonempty border without internal occurrences. In this paper we introduce the definition of a \emph{maximal closed substring} (MCS), which is an occurrence of a closed substring that cannot be…

A word is square-free if it does not contain any square (a word of the form $XX$), and is extremal square-free if it cannot be extended to a new square-free word by inserting a single letter at any position. Grytczuk, Kordulewski, and…

A permutation is square-free if it does not contain two consecutive factors of length two or more that are order-isomorphic. A square-free permutation of length $n$ is $P$-crucial, where $P$ is a subset of $\{0,1,\ldots,n\}$, if any of its…

We consider problems concerning the largest degrees of irreducible characters of symmetric groups, and the multiplicities of character degrees of symmetric groups. Using evidence from computer experiments, we posit several new conjectures…

In combinatorics on words, a word w of length n over an alphabet of size q is said to be privileged if n <= 1 or if n >= 2 and w has a privileged border that occurs exactly twice in w. Forsyth, Jayakumar and Shallit proved that there exist…

How many squares are spanned by $n$ points in the plane? Here we study the corresponding maximum possible number $S_{\square}(n)$ of squares and determine the exact values for all $n\le 17$. For $18\le n\le 100$ we give lower bounds for…

We show that the number of length-n words over a k-letter alphabet having no even palindromic prefix is the same as the number of length-n unbordered words, by constructing an explicit bijection between the two sets. A slightly different…