Related papers: Who Wins the Multi-Structural Game?
Multi-structural (MS) games are combinatorial games that capture the number of quantifiers of first-order sentences. On the face of their definition, MS games differ from Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse (EF) games in two ways: first, MS games are…
We study multi-structural games, played on two sets $\mathcal{A}$ and $\mathcal{B}$ of structures. These games generalize Ehrenfeucht-Fra\"{i}ss\'{e} games. Whereas Ehrenfeucht-Fra\"{i}ss\'{e} games capture the quantifier rank of a…
The number of quantifiers needed to express first-order properties is captured by two-player combinatorial games called multi-structural (MS) games. We play these games on linear orders and strings, and introduce a technique we call…
Spoiler-Duplicator games are used in finite model theory to examine the expressive power of logics. Their strategies have recently been reformulated as coKleisli maps of game comonads over relational structures, providing new results in…
Combinatorial games are widely used in finite model theory, constraint satisfaction, modal logic and concurrency theory to characterize logical equivalences between structures. In particular, Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse games, pebble games, and…
We define a version of the Ehrenfeucht-Fra\"iss\'e game in the setting of metric model theory and continuous first-order logic and show that the second player having a winning strategy in a game of length $n$ exactly corresponds to being…
Two structures $A$ and $B$ are $n$-equivalent if player II has a winning strategy in the $n$-move Ehrenfeucht-Fra\"iss\'e game on $A$ and $B$. In earlier papers we studied $n$-equivalence classes of ordinals and coloured ordinals. In this…
Consider QBF, the Quantified Boolean Formula problem, as a combinatorial game ruleset. The problem is rephrased as determining the winner of the game where two opposing players take turns assigning values to boolean variables. In this…
Ehrenfeucht-Fra\"iss\'e (EF) games are a basic tool in finite model theory for proving definability lower bounds, with many applications in complexity theory and related areas. They have been applied to study various logics, giving insights…
We consider simulation games played between Spoiler and Duplicator on two B\"uchi automata in which the choices made by Spoiler can be buffered by Duplicator in several buffers before she executes them on her structure. We show that the…
We consider simulation games played between Spoiler and Duplicator on two Buchi automata in which the choices made by Spoiler can be buffered by Duplicator in two different buffers before she executes them on her structure. Previous work on…
In many combinatorial games, one can prove that the first player wins under best play using a simple but non-constructive argument called strategy-stealing. This work is about the complexity behind these proofs: how hard is it to actually…
We introduce two new model comparison games that characterize separability by first-order formulas with generalized quantifiers. One is built on the Ehrenfeucht-Fra\"iss\'e game and the other is a formula-size game.
We introduce a refinement of the usual Ehrenfeucht-Fra\"{\i}ss\'e game. The new game will help us make finer distinctions than the traditional one. In particular, it can be used to measure the size formulas needed for expressing a given…
Many problems in compositional synthesis and verification of multi-agent systems -- such as rational verification and assume-guarantee verification in probabilistic systems -- reduce to reasoning about two-player multi-objective stochastic…
We study a combinatorial game derived from a problem in the German National Mathematics Competition. In this game, two players take turns removing numbers from a finite set of natural numbers, aiming to satisfy a certain divisibility…
Combinatorial games are widely used in finite model theory, constraint satisfaction, modal logic and concurrency theory to characterize logical equivalences between structures. In particular, Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse games, pebble games, and…
The second author introduced with I. T\"orm\"a a two-player word-building game [Playing with Subshifts, Fund. Inform. 132 (2014), 131--152]. The game has a predetermined (possibly finite) choice sequence $\alpha_1$, $\alpha_2$, $\ldots$ of…
Truth, consistency and elementary equivalence can all be characterised in terms of games, namely the so-called evaluation game, the model-existence game, and the Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse game. We point out the great affinity of these games to…
We propose a new version of formula size game for modal logic. The game characterizes the equivalence of pointed Kripke-models up to formulas of given numbers of modal operators and binary connectives. Our game is similar to the well-known…