Related papers: 4-tangrams are 4-avoidable
We prove that a random word of length $n$ over a $k$-ary fixed alphabet contains, on expectation, $\Theta(\sqrt{n})$ distinct palindromic factors. We study this number of factors, $E(n,k)$, in detail, showing that the limit…
A word is "crucial" with respect to a given set of "prohibited words" (or simply "prohibitions") if it avoids the prohibitions but it cannot be extended to the right by any letter of its alphabet without creating a prohibition. A "minimal…
Vincular or dashed patterns resemble classical patterns except that some of the letters within an occurrence are required to be adjacent. We prove several infinite families of Wilf-equivalences for k-ary words involving vincular patterns…
A shuffle square is a word consisting of two shuffled copies of the same word. For instance, the Turkish word $\mathtt{\color{red}{ik}\color{blue}{i}\color{red}{li}\color{blue}{kli}}$ (binary in English) is a shuffle square, as it can be…
In this note, we give an elementary proof of the following classical fact. Any positive definite ternary quadratic form over the rational numbers fails to represent infinitely many positive integers. For any ternary quadratic form (positive…
Squares (fragments of the form $xx$, for some string $x$) are arguably the most natural type of repetition in strings. The basic algorithmic question concerning squares is to check if a given string of length $n$ is square-free, that is,…
We investigate the avoidability of unary patterns of size of four with morphic permutations. More precisely, we show that, for the positive integers $i,j,k$, the sizes of the alphabets over which a pattern $x \pi ^ {i} (x) \pi^{j}(x)…
The lexicographically least square-free infinite word on the alphabet of non-negative integers with a given prefix $p$ is denoted $L(p)$. When $p$ is the empty word, this word was shown by Guay-Paquet and Shallit to be the ruler sequence.…
An overlap-free (or $\beta$-free) word $w$ over a fixed alphabet $\Sigma$ is extremal if every word obtained from $w$ by inserting a single letter from $\Sigma$ at any position contains an overlap (or a factor of exponent at least $\beta$,…
An order-preserving square in a string is a fragment of the form $uv$ where $u\neq v$ and $u$ is order-isomorphic to $v$. We show that a string $w$ of length $n$ over an alphabet of size $\sigma$ contains $\mathcal{O}(\sigma n)$…
The repetition threshold for words on $n$ letters, denoted $\mbox{RT}(n)$, is the infimum of the set of all $r$ such that there are arbitrarily long $r$-free words over $n$ letters. A repetition threshold for circular words on $n$ letters…
A pattern is encountered in a word if some infix of the word is the image of the pattern under some non-erasing morphism. A pattern $p$ is unavoidable if, over every finite alphabet, every sufficiently long word encounters $p$. A theorem by…
A pair of letters $x$ and $y$ are said to alternate in a word $w$ if, after removing all letters except for the copies of $x$ and $y$ from $w$, the resulting word is of the form $xyxy\ldots$ (of even or odd length) or $yxyx\ldots$ (of even…
The recently confirmed Dejean's conjecture about the threshold between avoidable and unavoidable powers of words gave rise to interesting and challenging problems on the structure and growth of threshold words. Over any finite alphabet with…
A cryptarithm (or alphametic) is a mathematical puzzle in which numbers are represented with words in such a way that identical letters stand for equal digits and distinct letters for unequal digits. An alphametic puzzle is usually given in…
A $4^-$-power is a non-empty word of the form $XXXX^-$, where $X^-$ is obtained from $X$ by erasing the last letter. A binary word is called {\em faux-bonacci} if it contains no $4^-$-powers, and no factor 11. We show that faux-bonacci…
A word on $q$ symbols is a sequence of letters from a fixed alphabet of size $q$. For an integer $k\ge 1$, we say that a word $w$ is $k$-universal if, given an arbitrary word of length $k$, one can obtain it by removing entries from $w$. It…
We investigate the scattered palindromic subwords in a finite word. We start by characterizing the words with the least number of scattered palindromic subwords. Then, we give an upper bound for the total number of palindromic subwords in a…
Over an alphabet of size 3 we construct an infinite balanced word with critical exponent 2+sqrt(2)/2. Over an alphabet of size 4 we construct an infinite balanced word with critical exponent (5+sqrt(5))/4. Over larger alphabets, we give…
We investigate the problem of the maximum number of cubic subwords (of the form $www$) in a given word. We also consider square subwords (of the form $ww$). The problem of the maximum number of squares in a word is not well understood.…