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Zen Puzzle Garden (ZPG) is a one-player puzzle game. In this paper, we prove that deciding the solvability of ZPG is NP-complete.
Simple board games, like Tic-Tac-Toe and CONNECT-4, play an important role not only in the development of mathematical and logical skills, but also in the emotional and social development. In this paper, we address the problem of generating…
Temporal graphs extend ordinary graphs with discrete time that affects the availability of edges. We consider solving games played on temporal graphs where one player aims to explore the graph, i.e., visit all vertices. The complexity…
In this paper we give a mathematical model for a game that we call picture cube puzzle and investigate its properties. The central question is the number of moves required to solve the puzzle. A mathematical discussion is followed by the…
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…
For all positive non-square integer multiplier k, there is an infinity of multiples of triangular numbers which are also triangular numbers. With a simple change of variables, these triangular numbers can be found using solutions of Pell…
Answering a question of Haugland, we show that the pooling problem with one pool and a bounded number of inputs can be solved in polynomial time by solving a polynomial number of linear programs of polynomial size. We also give an overview…
What is the average number of tosses needed before a particular sequence of heads and tails turns up? We solve the problem didactically, starting with doubles, finding that a tail, followed by a head, turns up on the average after only four…
The solution set of a system of polynomial equations typically contains ill-behaved, singular points. Resolution is a fundamental process in geometry in which we replace singular points with smooth points, while keeping the rest of the…
A new surveillance-evasion differential game is posed and solved in which an agile pursuer (the prying pedestrian) seeks to remain within a given surveillance range of a less agile evader that aims to escape. In contrast to previous…
We prove PSPACE-completeness of two classic types of Chess problems when generalized to n-by-n boards. A "retrograde" problem asks whether it is possible for a position to be reached from a natural starting position, i.e., whether the…
We explain a highly efficient algorithm for playing the simplest type of dots and boxes endgame optimally (by which we mean "in such a way so as to maximise the number of boxes that you take"). The algorithm is sufficiently simple that it…
We initiate the study of simple games from the point of view of combinatorial topology. The starting premise is that the losing coalitions of a simple game can be identified with a simplicial complex. Various topological constructions and…
In this paper, we address an instance of uniquely solvable mean-field game with a common noise whose corresponding counterpart without common noise has several equilibria. We study the selection problem for this mean-field game without…
In the natural generalization of tic-tac-toe to an $n \times n \times n$ board where $n \in \mathbb{N}$, it is known that the first player has a winning strategy if $n \leq 4$ and that either player can force a draw if $n \geq 8$. The…
We expand the theory of pebbling to graphs with weighted edges. In a weighted pebbling game, one player distributes a set amount of weight on the edges of a graph and his opponent chooses a target vertex and places a configuration of…
Two-player complete-information game trees are perhaps the simplest possible setting for studying general-sum games and the computational problem of finding equilibria. These games admit a simple bottom-up algorithm for finding subgame…
In imperfect-information games, subgame solving is significantly more challenging than in perfect-information games, but in the last few years, such techniques have been developed. They were the key ingredient to the milestone of superhuman…
We start with the well-known game below: Two players hold a sheet of paper to their forehead on which a positive integer is written. The numbers are consecutive and each player can only see the number of the other one. In each time step,…
Game solving is the process of finding the theoretical outcome for a game, assuming that all player choices are optimal. This paper focuses on a technique that can reduce the heuristic search space significantly for 7x7 Killall-Go. In Go…