Related papers: Tetris is Hard with Just One Piece Type
We prove computational intractability of variants of checkers: (1) deciding whether there is a move that forces the other player to win in one move is NP-complete; (2) checkers where players must always be able to jump on their turn is…
We introduce the constrained topological sorting problem (CTS): given a regular language K and a directed acyclic graph G with labeled vertices, determine if G has a topological sort that forms a word in K. This natural problem applies to…
We study a Faulty Congested Clique model, in which an adversary may fail nodes in the network throughout the computation. We show that any task of $O(n\log{n})$-bit input per node can be solved in roughly $n$ rounds, where $n$ is the size…
Here we show that deciding whether two rooted binary phylogenetic trees on the same set of taxa permit a cherry-picking sequence, a special type of elimination order on the taxa, is NP-complete. This improves on an earlier result which…
$\textit{Magic: The Gathering}$ is a popular and famously complicated trading card game about magical combat. In this paper we show that optimal play in real-world $\textit{Magic}$ is at least as hard as the Halting Problem, solving a…
We explore the following problem: given a collection of creases on a piece of paper, each assigned a folding direction of mountain or valley, is there a flat folding by a sequence of simple folds? There are several models of simple folds;…
Recently, the minimum number of reticulation events that is required to simultaneously embed a collection P of rooted binary phylogenetic trees into a so-called temporal network has been characterized in terms of cherry-picking sequences.…
We study the optimization problem faced by a perfectly informed principal in a Bayesian game, who reveals information to the players about the state of nature to obtain a desirable equilibrium. This signaling problem is the natural design…
We consider here the problem of obtaining reliable, consistent information from inconsistent databases -- databases that do not have to satisfy given integrity constraints. We use the notion of consistent query answer -- a query answer…
A knockout tournament is one of the most simple and popular forms of competition. Here, we are given a binary tournament tree where all leaves are labeled with seed position names. The players participating in the tournament are assigned to…
Constructor rewriting systems are said to be cons-free if, roughly, constructor terms in the right-hand sides of rules are subterms of the left-hand sides; the computational intuition is that rules cannot build new data structures. In…
A fundamental question in parallel computation, posed by Karp, Upfal, and Wigderson (FOCS 1985, JCSS 1988), asks: \emph{given only independence-oracle access to a matroid on $n$ elements, how many rounds are required to find a basis using…
We consider the robustness of computational hardness of problems whose input is obtained by applying independent random deletions to worst-case instances. For some classical $NP$-hard problems on graphs, such as Coloring, Vertex-Cover, and…
The well-known trace reconstruction problem is the problem of inferring an unknown source string $x \in \{0,1\}^n$ from independent "traces", i.e. copies of $x$ that have been corrupted by a $\delta$-deletion channel which independently…
Continuing results from JCDCGGG 2016 and 2017, we solve several new cases of the simple foldability problem -- deciding which crease patterns can be folded flat by a sequence of (some model of) simple folds. We give new efficient algorithms…
We propose a new kind of sliding-block puzzle, called Gourds, where the objective is to rearrange 1 x 2 pieces on a hexagonal grid board of 2n + 1 cells with n pieces, using sliding, turning and pivoting moves. This puzzle has a single…
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…
This paper talk about the complexity of computation by Turing Machine. I take attention to the relation of symmetry and order structure of the data, and I think about the limitation of computation time. First, I make general problem named…
Constructor rewriting systems are said to be cons-free if, roughly, constructor terms in the right-hand sides of rules are subterms of constructor terms in the left-hand side; the computational intuition is that rules cannot build new data…
Classical complexity theory measures the cost of computing a function, but many computational tasks require committing to one valid output among several. We introduce determination depth -- the minimum number of sequential layers of…