Related papers: New directions in enumerative chess problems
In this article, we give a polynomial algorithm to decide whether a given permutation $\sigma$ is sortable with two stacks in series. This is indeed a longstanding open problem which was first introduced by Knuth. He introduced the stack…
We examine the problem of searching sequentially for a desired real value (a key) within a sorted unbalanced three-dimensional finite real array. This classic problem can be viewed as determining the correct dimensional threshold function…
Many algorithms have been developed for enumerating various combinatorial objects in time exponentially less than the number of objects. Two common classes of algorithms are dynamic programming and the transfer matrix method. This paper…
An archetypal problem discussed in computer science is the problem of searching for a given number in a given set of numbers. Other than sequential search, the classic solution is to sort the list of numbers and then apply binary search.…
We analyse the computational complexity of finding Nash equilibria in simple stochastic multiplayer games. We show that restricting the search space to equilibria whose payoffs fall into a certain interval may lead to undecidability. In…
In this paper we develop a method to compute the solution to a countable (finite or infinite) set of equations that occurs in many different fields including Markov processes that model queueing systems, birth-and-death processes and…
We consider a general class of round-robin tournament models of equally strong players. In these models, each of the $n$ players competes against every other player exactly once. For each match between two players, the outcome is a value…
We study a sorting machine consisting of two stacks in series where the first stack has the added restriction such that entries in the stack must be in decreasing order from top to bottom. We give the basis of the class of permutations that…
The game of Hangman is a classical asymmetric two player game in which one player, the setter, chooses a secret word from a language, that the other player, the guesser, tries to discover through single letter matching queries, answered by…
Schmidt games and the Cantor winning property give alternative notions of largeness, similar to the more standard notions of measure and category. Being intuitive, flexible, and applicable to recent research made them an active object of…
Various forms of sorting problems have been studied over the years. Recently, two kinds of sorting puzzle apps are popularized. In these puzzles, we are given a set of bins filled with colored units, balls or water, and some empty bins.…
The transitivity of preferences is one of the basic assumptions used in the theory of games and decisions. It is often equated with rationality of choice and is considered useful in building rankings. Intransitive preferences are considered…
Discrete-time replicator map is a prototype of evolutionary selection game dynamical models that have been very successful across disciplines in rendering insights into the attainment of the equilibrium outcomes, like the Nash equilibrium…
Stochastic games are an important class of problems that generalize Markov decision processes to game theoretic scenarios. We consider finite state two-player zero-sum stochastic games over an infinite time horizon with discounted rewards.…
In the past three decades, deductive games have become interesting from the algorithmic point of view. Deductive games are two players zero sum games of imperfect information. The first player, called "codemaker", chooses a secret code and…
We introduce a large family of combinatorial objects, called standard puzzles, defined by very simple rules. We focus on the standard puzzles for which the enumeration problems can be solved by explicit formulas or by classical numbers,…
We show that, in John Conway's board game Phutball (or Philosopher's Football), it is NP-complete to determine whether the current player has a move that immediately wins the game. In contrast, the similar problems of determining whether…
This note addresses the meander enumeration problem: "Count all topologically inequivalent configurations of a closed planar non self-intersecting curve crossing a line through a given number of points". We review a description of meanders…
A combinatorial game is a two-player game without hidden information or chance elements. One of the major approaches to analyzing games in combinatorial game theory is to break down a given game position into a disjunctive sum of multiple…
We develop value iteration-based algorithms to solve in a unified manner different classes of combinatorial zero-sum games with mean-payoff type rewards. These algorithms rely on an oracle, evaluating the dynamic programming operator up to…