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Related papers: Note on a Coin Tossing Problem Posed by Daniel Lit…

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Coin tossing is a cryptographic task in which two parties who do not trust each other aim to generate a common random bit. Using classical communication this is impossible, but non trivial coin tossing is possible using quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2009-11-10 Louis-Philippe Lamoureux , Edouard Brainis , David Amans , Jonathan Barrett , Serge Massar

In a guessing game, players guess the value of a random real number selected using some probability density function. The winner may be determined in various ways; for example, a winner can be a player whose guess is closest in magnitude to…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-07-11 Anthony Mendes , Kent E. Morrison

In this paper we are going to solve an open problem about the game tetris. We are going to give the first results in the complexity of a variant of offline tetris introduced by Erik Demaine, Susan Hohenberger and David Liben Nowell in their…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2015-06-25 Oscar Temprano

Penney's game is a two player zero-sum game in which each player chooses a three-flip pattern of heads and tails and the winner is the player whose pattern occurs first in repeated tosses of a fair coin. Because the players choose…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-04-24 Joshua B. Miller

This paper considers a game-theoretic formulation of the covert communications problem with finite blocklength, where the transmitter (Alice) can randomly vary her transmit power in different blocks, while the warden (Willie) can randomly…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2020-05-28 Alex S. Leong , Daniel E. Quevedo , Subhrakanti Dey

That there exist two losing games that can be combined, either by random mixture or by nonrandom alternation, to form a winning game is known as Parrondo's paradox. We establish a strong law of large numbers and a central limit theorem for…

Probability · Mathematics 2009-09-04 S. N. Ethier , Jiyeon Lee

In this paper, we perform a minimalistic quantization of the classical game of tic-tac-toe, by allowing superpositions of classical moves. In order for the quantum game to reduce properly to the classical game, we require legal quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-05-19 J. N. Leaw , S. A. Cheong

Dice odds in the board game RISK were first investigated by Tan, fixed by Osbourne, and extended by Blatt. We generalized dice odds further, varying the number of sides and the number of dice used in a single battle. We show that the…

History and Overview · Mathematics 2015-12-15 Sam Hendel , Charles Hoffman , Corey Manack , Amy Wagaman

Alice is a charismatic quantum cryptographer who believes her parties are unmissable; Bob is a (relatively) glamorous string theorist who believes he is an indispensable guest. To prevent possibly traumatic collisions of self-perception and…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Roger Colbeck , Adrian Kent

We consider the permutation analogue of Penney's game for words. Two players, in order, each choose a permutation of length $k\ge3$; then a sequence of independent random values from a continuous distribution is generated, until the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-04-29 Sergi Elizalde , Yixin Lin

We study the computation contests where players compete for searching a solution to a given problem with a winner-take-all reward. The search processes are independent across the players and the search speeds of players are proportional to…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-02-26 Yulong Zeng , Song Zuo

Random selection, leader election, and collective coin flipping are fundamental tasks in fault-tolerant distributed computing. We study these problems in the full-information model where despite decades of study, key gaps remain in our…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2026-04-30 Eshan Chattopadhyay , Mohit Gurumukhani , Noam Ringach , Rocco A. Servedio

In 2022, Olivier Longuet, a French mathematics teacher, created a game called the \textit{calissons puzzle}. Given a triangular grid in a hexagon and some given edges of the grid, the problem is to find a calisson tiling such that no input…

Computational Geometry · Computer Science 2023-07-06 Jean-Marie Favreau , Yan Gerard , Pascal Lafourcade , Léo Robert

In this article, we study a nonlocal game with two questions and three answers per player, which was first considered by Feige in 1991, and show that there is quantum advantage in this game. We prove that the game is a robust self-test for…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-02-27 Simon Schmidt , Sigurd A. L. Storgaard , Michael Walter , Yuming Zhao

Suppose that attached to each site z in Z is a coin with bias theta(z), and only finitely many of these coins have non-zero bias. Allow a simple random walker to generate observations by tossing, at each move, the coin attached to its…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-06-13 David A. Levin , Yuval Peres

The reader is reminded of several puzzles involving randomness. These may be ill-posed, and if well-posed there is sometimes a solution that uses probabilistic intuition in a special way. Various examples are presented including the well…

Probability · Mathematics 2019-10-08 Geoffrey R. Grimmett , David R. Stirzaker

This is a survey paper on Poisson approximation using Stein's method of exchangeable pairs. We illustrate using Poisson-binomial trials and many variations on three classical problems of combinatorial probability: the matching problem, the…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Sourav Chatterjee , Persi Diaconis , Elizabeth Meckes

Multi-round competitions often double or triple the points awarded in the final round, calling it a bonus, to maximize spectators' excitement. In a two-player competition with $n$ rounds, we aim to derive the optimal bonus size to maximize…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-06-10 Zhihuan Huang , Yuqing Kong , Tracy Xiao Liu , Grant Schoenebeck , Shengwei Xu

We study concurrent graph games where n players cooperate against an opponent to reach a set of target states. Unlike traditional settings, we study distributed randomisation: team players do not share a source of randomness, and their…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Léonard Brice , Thomas A. Henzinger , Alipasha Montaseri , Ali Shafiee , K. S. Thejaswini

Suppose we have $n$ dice, each with $s$ faces (assume $s\geq n$). On the first turn, roll all of them, and remove from play those that rolled an $n$. Roll all of the remaining dice. In general, if at a certain turn you are left with $k$…