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Wordle is a popular, online word game offered by the New York Times (nytimes.com). Currently there are some 2 million players of the English version worldwide. Players have 6 attempts to guess the daily word (target word) and after each…
The optimal strategies to catch a randomly walking cat in various environments are presented. All games have a player that opens a box at step $i$. If the cat is in this box the player wins, if not, the cat moves randomly to an adjacent…
Recent work has considered natural variations of the multi-armed bandit problem, where the reward distribution of each arm is a special function of the time passed since its last pulling. In this direction, a simple (yet widely applicable)…
The game of Cat Herding is one in which cat and herder players alternate turns, with the evasive cat moving along non-trivial paths between vertices, and the herder deleting single edges from the graph. Eventually the cat cannot move, and…
We study an evolutionary game of chance in which the probabilities for different outcomes (e.g., heads or tails) depend on the amount wagered on those outcomes. The game is perhaps the simplest possible probabilistic game in which…
Evolution of distribution of strategies in game theory is an interesting question that has been studied only for specific cases. Here I develop a general method to extend analysis of the evolution of continuous strategy distributions given…
Several phase transitions for excited random walks on the integers are known to be characterized by a certain drift parameter delta. For recurrence/transience the critical threshold is |delta|=1, for ballisticity it is |delta|=2 and for…
In this paper, we study the average case complexity of the Unique Games problem. We propose a natural semi-random model, in which a unique game instance is generated in several steps. First an adversary selects a completely satisfiable…
A casino offers the following game. There are three cups each containing a die. You are being told that the dice in the cups are all the same, but possibly nonstandard. For a bet of \$1, the game master shakes all three cups and lets you…
We describe a generalized scheme for the probability-changing cluster (PCC) algorithm, based on the study of the finite-size scaling property of the correlation ratio, the ratio of the correlation functions with different distances. We…
In the context of investment analysis, we formulate an abstract online computing problem called a planning game and develop general tools for solving such a game. We then use the tools to investigate a practical buy-and-hold trading problem…
In each step of the overlapping cycles shuffle on $n$ cards, a fair coin is flipped which determines whether the $m$th card or the $n$th card is moved to the top of the deck. Angel, Peres, and Wilson showed the following interesting fact:…
We study the distribution of cycle lengths in models of nonuniform random permutations with cycle weights. We identify several regimes. Depending on the weights, the length of typical cycles grows like the total number $n$ of elements, or a…
We present a variant of the Minority Game in which players who where successful in the previous timestep stay with their decision, while the losers change their decision with a probability $p$. Analytical results for different regimes of…
We study a modified prisoner's dilemma game taking place on two-dimensional disordered square lattices. The players are pure strategists and can either cooperate or defect with their immediate neighbors. In the generations each player…
Inspired by the Japanese game Pachinko, we study simple (perfectly "inelastic" collisions) dynamics of a unit ball falling amidst point obstacles (pins) in the plane. A classic example is that a checkerboard grid of pins produces the…
Repeated games have a long tradition in the behavioral sciences and evolutionary biology. Recently, strategies were discovered that permit an unprecedented level of control over repeated interactions by enabling a player to unilaterally…
We study linearly edge-reinforced random walks on $\mathbb{Z}_+$, where each edge $\{x,x+1\}$ has the initial weight $x^{\alpha} \vee 1$, and each time an edge is traversed, its weight is increased by $\Delta$. It is known that the walk is…
For sequential betting games, Kelly's theory, aimed at maximization of the logarithmic growth of one's account value, involves optimization of the so-called betting fraction $K$. In this Letter, we extend the classical formulation to allow…
The effect of space inhomogeneities on a diffusing particle is studied in the framework of the 1D random walk. The typical time needed by a particle to cross a one--dimensional finite lane, the so--called residence time, is computed…