Related papers: Solitaire Clobber
We prove that the classic falling-block video game Tetris (both survival and board clearing) remains NP-complete even when restricted to 8 columns, or to 4 rows, settling open problems posed over 15 years ago [BDH+04]. Our reduction is from…
Two new versions of the so-called Maker-Breaker Positional Games are defined by J\'ozsef Beck in [{\em Combinatorica} {\bf 22}(2) (2002) 169--216]. He defines two players, Picker and Chooser. In each round, Picker takes a pair of elements…
We propose a new tournament structure that combines the popular knockout tournaments and the round-robin tournaments. As opposed to the extremes of divisive elimination and no elimination, our tournament aims to eliminate the participants…
Despite its long history, the classical game of peg solitaire continues to attract the attention of the scientific community. In this paper, we consider two problems with an algorithmic flavour which are related with this game, namely…
We show that the classical game LaserTank is $\mathrm{NP}$-complete, even when the tank movement is restricted to a single column and the only blocks appearing on the board are mirrors and solid blocks. We show this by reducing $3$-SAT…
We study the classical game of peg solitaire when diagonal jumps are allowed. We prove that on many boards, one can begin from a full board with one peg missing, and finish with one peg anywhere on the board. We then consider the problem of…
Classic Rock-Paper-Scissors, RPS, has seen many variants and generalizations in the past several years. In the previous paper, we defined playability and balance for games. We used these definitions to show that different forms of imbalance…
Bloxorz is an online puzzle game where players move a 1 by 1 by 2 block by tilting it on a subset of the two dimensional grid. Bloxorz features switches that open and close trapdoors. The puzzle is to move the block from its initial…
The effects of an additional strategy or character called loner in the snowdrift game are studied in a well-mixed population or fully-connected network and in a square lattice. The snowdrift game, which is a possible alternative to the…
We study the complexity of a particular class of board games, which we call `slide and merge' games. Namely, we consider 2048 and Threes, which are among the most popular games of their type. In both games, the player is required to slide…
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…
Domineering is a two player game played on a checkerboard in which one player places dominoes vertically and the other places them horizontally. We give bivariate generating polynomials enumerating Domineering positions by the number of…
A query game is a pair of a set $Q$ of queries and a set $\mathcal{F}$ of functions, or codewords $f:Q\rightarrow \mathbb{Z}.$ We think of this as a two-player game. One player, Codemaker, picks a hidden codeword $f\in \mathcal{F}$. The…
The Bulgarian solitaire is a mathematical card game played by one person. A pack of n cards is divided into several decks (or "piles"). Each move consists of the removing of one card from each deck and collecting the removed cards to form a…
Tetravex is a widely played one person computer game in which you are given $n^2$ unit tiles, each edge of which is labelled with a number. The objective is to place each tile within a $n$ by $n$ square such that all neighbouring edges are…
Collapsi is a two-player game of complete information released in June 2025 by Mark S. Ball of Riffle Shuffle & Roll. Played with two pawns on a toroidal board of 16 randomly mixed playing cards, players take it in turns to move based on…
This contribution deals with a two-level discrete decision problem, a so-called Stackelberg strategic game: A Subset Sum setting is addressed with a set $N$ of items with given integer weights. One distinguished player, the leader, may…
We will describe a combinatorial game that models the problem of resolution of singularities of algebraic varieties over a field of characteristic zero. By giving a winning strategy for this game, we give another proof of the existence of…
Consider a situation with $n$ agents or players where some of the players form a coalition with a certain collective objective. Simple games are used to model systems that can decide whether coalitions are successful (winning) or not…
Tumbleweed is a popular two-player perfect-information new territorial game played at the prestigious Mind Sport Olympiad. We define a generalized version of the game, where the board size is arbitrary and so is the possible number of…