Related papers: The n-queens solution count Q(n) is divisible by 4
Infinite chess is chess played on an infinite edgeless chessboard. The familiar chess pieces move about according to their usual chess rules, and each player strives to place the opposing king into checkmate. The mate-in-n problem of…
In Martin Gardner's October, 1976 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American, he posed the following problem: "What is the smallest number of [queens] you can put on a board of side n such that no [queen] can be added without creating…
We found a solution of the star puzzle (a path on a chessboard from c5 to d4 in 14 straight strokes) in 14 queen moves, which has been claimed by the author as impossible.
This paper is concerned with the problem of finding $n$ distinct squares such that, on excluding any one of them, the sum of the remaining $n-1$ squares is a square. While parametric solutions are known when $n=3$ and $n=4$, when $n > 4$,…
A famous (and hard) chess problem asks what is the maximum number of safe squares possible in placing $n$ queens on an $n\times n$ board. We examine related problems from placing $n$ rooks. We prove that as $n\to\infty$, the probability…
We prove that king chasing problem in Chinese Chess is NP-hard when generalized to $n\times n$ boards. `King chasing' is a frequently-used strategy in Chinese Chess, which means that the player has to continuously check the opponent in…
In [1] the authors studied the closed tour problem on the $8\times 8$ chessboard of a chess piece, called $k$-prince, leaving open the existence of such a tour when $k=7$. In this note we find a solution to this open case.
We study the disproportionate version of the classical cake-cutting problem: how efficiently can we divide a cake, here $[0,1]$, among $n$ agents with different demands $\alpha_1, \alpha_2, \dots, \alpha_n$ summing to $1$? When all the…
How many chess rooks or queens does it take to guard all the squares of a given polyomino, the union of square tiles from a square grid? This question is a version of the art gallery problem in which the guards can "see" whichever squares…
In 1976 Martin Gardner posed the following problem: ``What is the smallest number of [queens] you can put on an [$n \times n$ chessboard] such that no [queen] can be added without creating three in a row, a column, or a diagonal?'' The work…
The $n$ queens problem considers the maximum number of safe squares on an $n \times n$ chess board when placing $n$ queens; the answer is only known for small $n$. Miller, Sheng and Turek considered instead $n$ randomly placed rooks,…
It is conjectured that every integer N>454 is the sum of seven nonnegative cubes. We prove the conjecture when N is congruent to 2 mod 4. This result, together with a recent proof for 4|N, shows that the conjecture is true for all even N.
Wythoff Nim aka Corner the Lady is a classic combinatorial game. A Queen is placed on an infinite chess board and two players take alternate turns, moving the Queen closer to the corner. The first player that corners the Queen wins. What…
We study the domination number $\gamma(Q_n^3)$ of the three-dimensional $n \times n \times n$ queen graph. The main result is a stratified theorem computing, for each position type -- corner, edge, face, or interior -- the number of…
Much progress has been made on the problem of calculating $g(n)$ for various classes of integers $n$, where $g$ is the group-counting function. We approach the inverse problem of solving the equations $g(n) = 6$ and $g(n) = 7$ in $n$. The…
Let $r_Q(n)$ be the representation number of a nonnegative integer $n$ by the quaternary quadratic form $Q=x_1^2+2x_2^2+x_3^2+x_4^2+x_1x_3+x_1x_4+x_2x_4$. We first prove the identity $r_Q(p^2n)=r_Q(p^2)r_Q(n)/r_Q(1)$ for any prime $p$…
An $n$-cap in $k$-dimensional projective space is a set of $n$ points so that no three lie on a line. In this note, we provide an algorithm to count the number of $n$-caps in $\mathbb{P}^3(\mathbb{F}_q)$, which follows from our recent paper…
In this paper, we present the problem of counting magic squares and we focus on the case of multiplicative magic squares of order 4. We give the exact number of normal multiplicative magic squares of order 4 with an original and complete…
We establish that almost every positive integer $n$ is the sum of four cubes, two of which are at most $n^{\theta}$, as long as $\theta\geq192/869$. An asymptotic formula for the number of such representations is established when…
It is conjectured that every integer N>454 is the sum of seven nonnegative cubes. We prove the conjecture when N is a multiple of 4.