Related papers: Solving Triangular Peg Solitaire
A rep-tile is a polygon that can be dissected into smaller copies (of the same size) of the original polygon. A polyomino is a polygon that is formed by joining one or more unit squares edge to edge. These two notions were first introduced…
We prove that any sufficiently small perturbation of an isosceles triangle has a periodic billiard path. Our proof involves the analysis of certain infinite families of Fourier series that arise in connection with triangular billiards, and…
We study a simple motion differential game of many pursuers and one evader in the plane. We give a nonempty closed convex set in the plane, and the pursuers and evader move on this set. They cannot leave this set during the game. Control…
A game is rigid if a near-optimal score guarantees, under the sole assumption of the validity of quantum mechanics, that the players are using an approximately unique quantum strategy. Rigidity has a vital role in quantum cryptography as it…
This paper presents a new lower bound for the discrete strategy improvement algorithm for solving parity games due to Voege and Jurdziski. First, we informally show which structures are difficult to solve for the algorithm. Second, we…
We develop a systematic way to solve linear equations involving tensors of arbitrary rank. We start off with the case of a rank $3$ tensor, which appears in many applications, and after finding the condition for a unique solution we derive…
We analyze the computational complexity of two 2-player games involving packing objects into a box. In the first game, players alternate drawing polycubes from a shared pile and placing them into an initially empty box in any available…
Modern board games are a rich source of interesting and new challenges for combinatorial problems. The game Nmbr9 is a solitaire style puzzle game using polyominoes. The rules of the game are simple to explain, but modelling the game…
We study the Lawn Mowing Problem restricted to periodic billiard paths in the unit square. Given the combinatorial data of a trajectory, we determine the optimal covering radius, and identify the shortest path that covers the square for any…
Bulgarian solitaire is played on $n$ cards divided into several piles; a move consists of picking one card from each pile to form a new pile. In a recent generalization, $\sigma$-Bulgarian solitaire, the number of cards you pick from a pile…
The classical Maker-Breaker positional game is played on a board which is a hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$, with two players, Maker and Breaker, alternately claiming vertices of $\mathcal{H}$ until all the vertices are claimed. When the game…
We carry out a game-theoretic analysis of the recursive game "Guts," a variant of poker featuring repeated play with possibly growing stakes. An interesting aspect of such games is the need to account for funds lost to all players if…
The (axis-parallel) stabbing number of a given set of line segments is the maximum number of segments that can be intersected by any one (axis-parallel) line. This paper deals with finding perfect matchings, spanning trees, or…
A Sudoku puzzle often has a regular pattern in the arrangement of initial digits and it is typically made solvable with known solving techniques, called strategies. In this paper, we consider the problem of generating such Sudoku instances.…
This paper investigates the popular card game UNO from the viewpoint of algorithmic combinatorial game theory. We define simple and concise mathematical models for the game, including both cooperative and uncooperative versions, and analyze…
So Long Sucker is a strategy board game that requires 4 players, each with $c$ chips of their designated color, and a board made of $k$ empty piles. With a clear set-up comes intricate rules, such as: players taking turns but not in a fixed…
We define a class of zero-sum games with combinatorial structure, where the best response problem of one player is to maximize a submodular function. For example, this class includes security games played on networks, as well as the problem…
Player ONE chooses a meager set and player TWO, a nowhere dense set per inning. They play $\omega$ many innings. ONE's consecutive choices must form a (weakly) increasing sequence. TWO wins if the union of the chosen nowhere dense sets…
The Generalized Sliding-Tile Puzzle (GSTP), allowing many square tiles on a board to move in parallel while enforcing natural geometric collision constraints on the movement of neighboring tiles, provide a high-fidelity mathematical model…
We consider systems of "pinned balls," i.e., balls that have fixed positions and pseudo-velocities. Pseudo-velocities change according to the same rules as those for velocities of totally elastic collisions between moving balls. The times…