Related papers: Evolomino is NP-complete
2-dimensional Matching Problem, which requires to find a matching of left- to right-vertices in a balanced $2n$-vertex bipartite graph, is a well-known polynomial problem, while various variants, like the 3-dimensional analogoue (3DM, with…
Inspired by a common technique for shuffling a deck of cards on a table without riffling, we continue the study of a prequel paper on the pile shuffle and its capabilities as a sorting device. We study two sort feasibility problems of…
We define a solitary game, the Yamanouchi toppling game, on any connected graph of n vertices. The game arises from the well-known chip-firing game when the usual relation of equivalence defined on the set of all configurations is replaced…
Akari, Takuzu, Kakuro and KenKen are logic games similar to Sudoku. In Akari, a labyrinth on a grid has to be lit by placing lanterns, respecting various constraints. In Takuzu a grid has to be filled with 0's and 1's, while respecting…
In the popular computer game of Tetris, the player is given a sequence of tetromino pieces and must pack them into a rectangular gameboard initially occupied by a given configuration of filled squares; any completely filled row of the…
"Flat origami" refers to the folding of flat, zero-curvature paper such that the finished object lies in a plane. Mathematically, flat origami consists of a continuous, piecewise isometric map $f:P\subseteq\mathbb{R}^2\to\mathbb{R}^2$ along…
We prove that a variant of 2048, a popular online puzzle game, is PSPACE-Complete. Our hardness result holds for a version of the problem where the player has oracle access to the computer player's moves. Specifically, we show that for an…
We prove that a particular pushing-blocks puzzle is intractable in 2D, improving an earlier result that established intractability in 3D [OS99]. The puzzle, inspired by the game *PushPush*, consists of unit square blocks on an integer…
Hybrid logic with binders is an expressive specification language. Its satisfiability problem is undecidable in general. If frames are restricted to N or general linear orders, then satisfiability is known to be decidable, but of…
Recent research has proposed neural architectures for solving combinatorial problems in structured output spaces. In many such problems, there may exist multiple solutions for a given input, e.g. a partially filled Sudoku puzzle may have…
Amazons is a board game which combines elements of Chess and Go. It has become popular in recent years, and has served as a useful platform for both game-theoretic study and AI games research. Buro showed that simple Amazons endgames are…
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…
An algorithm to create difficult Sudoku puzzles is proposed. An Ising spin-glass like Hamiltonian describing difficulty of puzzles is defined, and difficult puzzles are created by minimizing the energy of the Hamiltonian. We adopt the…
In this work, we prove the NP-completeness of two variants of tokenisation, defined as the problem of compressing a dataset to at most $\delta$ symbols by either finding a vocabulary directly (direct tokenisation), or selecting a sequence…
We study a family of sorting match puzzles on grids, which we call permutation match puzzles. In this puzzle, each row and column of a $n \times n$ grid is labeled with an ordering constraint -- ascending (A) or descending (D) -- and the…
We consider a problem concerning tilings of rectangular regions by a finite library of polyominoes. We specifically look at rectangular regions of dimension $n\times m$ and ask whether or not a tiling of this region can be rearranged so…
An inglenook puzzle is a classic shunting (switching) puzzle often found on model railway layouts. A collection of wagons sits in a fan of sidings with a limited length headshunt (lead track). The aim of the puzzle is to rearrange the…
This paper introduces the novel task of multimodal puzzle solving, framed within the context of visual question-answering. We present a new dataset, AlgoPuzzleVQA designed to challenge and evaluate the capabilities of multimodal language…
One of the driving problems in the CSP area is the Dichotomy Conjecture, formulated in 1993 by Feder and Vardi [STOC'93], stating that for any fixed relational structure G the Constraint Satisfaction Problem CSP(G) is either NP--complete or…
We consider apictorial edge-matching puzzles, in which the goal is to arrange a collection of puzzle pieces with colored edges so that the colors match along the edges of adjacent pieces. We devise an algebraic representation for this…