English
Related papers

Related papers: Mastermind is NP-Complete

200 papers

The 15 puzzle is a classic reconfiguration puzzle with fifteen uniquely labeled unit squares within a $4 \times 4$ board in which the goal is to slide the squares (without ever overlapping) into a target configuration. By generalizing the…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2018-04-30 Erik D. Demaine , Mikhail Rudoy

In the popular computer game of Tetris, the player is given a sequence of tetromino pieces and must pack them into a rectangular gameboard initially occupied by a given configuration of filled squares; any completely filled row of the…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2007-05-23 Erik D. Demaine , Susan Hohenberger , David Liben-Nowell

The non-preemptive job scheduling problem with release times and deadlines on a single machine is fundamental to many scheduling problems. We parameterize this problem by the set of job lengths the jobs can have. The case where all job…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2017-11-01 Jan Elffers , Mathijs de Weerdt

Skill mastery is a priority for success in all fields. We present a parallel between the development of skill mastery and the process of solving jigsaw puzzles. We show that iterative random sampling solves jigsaw puzzles in two phases: a…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2024-03-04 Neil Zhao , Diana Zheng

Recent results show that a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) defined over rational numbers with their natural ordering has a solution if and only if it has a definable solution. The proof uses advanced results from topology and modern…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2020-03-31 Michał R. Przybyłek

We analyse the complexity of the satisfiability problem ssmSAT for State Space Models (SSM), which asks whether an input sequence can lead the model to an accepting configuration. We find that ssmSAT is undecidable in general, reflecting…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-08-26 Eric Alsmann , Martin Lange

We study Snipperclips, a computer puzzle game whose objective is to create a target shape with two tools. The tools start as constant-complexity shapes, and each tool can snip (i.e., subtract its current shape from) the other tool. We study…

Computational complexity of the design problem for a network with a target value of Region-Based Component Decomposition Number (RBCDN) has been proven to be NP-complete.

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2010-12-13 Sujogya Banerjee , Shahrzad Shirazipourazad , Pavel Ghosh , Arunabha Sen

We study the complexity of problems related to subgame-perfect equilibria (SPEs) in infinite duration non zero-sum multiplayer games played on finite graphs with parity objectives. We present new complexity results that close gaps in the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-04-22 Léonard Brice , Marie van den Bogaard , Jean-François Raskin

We study the Parallel Task Scheduling problem $Pm|size_j|C_{\max}$ with a constant number of machines. This problem is known to be strongly NP-complete for each $m \geq 5$, while it is solvable in pseudo-polynomial time for each $m \leq 3$.…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2017-05-15 Sören Henning , Klaus Jansen , Malin Rau , Lars Schmarje

In the Generalized Mastermind problem, there is an unknown subset $H$ of the hypercube $\{0,1\}^d$ containing $n$ points. The goal is to learn $H$ by making a few queries to an oracle, which, given a point $q$ in $\{0,1\}^d$, returns the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-09-11 Milind Prabhu , David Woodruff

Wataridori is a pencil puzzle that involves drawing paths in a rectangular grid to connect circles into pairs while satisfying several constraints. In this paper, we prove that deciding whether a given Wataridori puzzle has a solution is…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2026-03-18 Suthee Ruangwises

Many AI synthesis problems such as planning or scheduling may be modelized as constraint satisfaction problems (CSP). A CSP is typically defined as the problem of finding any consistent labeling for a fixed set of variables satisfying all…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-03-25 Thomas Schiex

We study the Constraint Satisfaction Problem CSP(A), where A is first-order definable in (Z;+,1) and contains +. We prove such problems are either in P or NP-complete.

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2018-07-04 Manuel Bodirsky , Barnaby Martin , Marcello Mamino , Antoine Mottet

We introduce a new -as far as we know- problem, according to which we are asked to match sequences of two digits in matrices having entries among those two digits (but others too) and prove that this problem is NP-complete

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2011-07-05 Nicolaos Matsakis

In this article, we show that the completion problem, i.e. the decision problem whether a partial structure can be completed to a full structure, is NP-complete for many combinatorial structures. While the gadgets for most reductions in…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2024-02-12 Helena Bergold , Manfred Scheucher , Felix Schröder

The New York Times (NYT) games have found widespread popularity in recent years and reportedly account for an increasing fraction of the newspaper's readership. In this paper, we bring the computational lens to the study of New York Times…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2025-09-16 Alessandro Giovanni Alberti , Flavio Chierichetti , Mirko Giacchini , Daniele Muscillo , Alessandro Panconesi , Erasmo Tani

Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have led to remarkable performance across a wide range of language understanding and mathematical tasks. As a result, increasing attention has been given to assessing the true reasoning…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-03-14 Jonas Golde , Patrick Haller , Fabio Barth , Alan Akbik

In recent years, reinforcement learning has seen interest because of deep Q-Learning, where the model is a convolutional neural network. Deep Q-Learning has shown promising results in games such as Atari and AlphaGo. Instead of learning the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-08 Anav Mehta

Satisfiability checking for monotone modal logic is known to be (only) NP-complete. We show that this remains true when the logic is extended with aconjunctive and alternation-free fixpoint operators as well as the universal modality; the…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2020-05-05 Daniel Hausmann , Lutz Schröder