1 x 1 Rush Hour with Fixed Blocks is PSPACE-complete
Abstract
Consider unit-square blocks in an square board, where each block is labeled as movable horizontally (only), movable vertically (only), or immovable -- a variation of Rush Hour with only cars and fixed blocks. We prove that it is PSPACE-complete to decide whether a given block can reach the left edge of the board, by reduction from Nondeterministic Constraint Logic via 2-color oriented Subway Shuffle. By contrast, polynomial-time algorithms are known for deciding whether a given block can be moved by one space, or when each block either is immovable or can move both horizontally and vertically. Our result answers a 15-year-old open problem by Tromp and Cilibrasi, and strengthens previous PSPACE-completeness results for Rush Hour with vertical and horizontal movable blocks and 4-color Subway Shuffle.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2003.09914,
title = {1 x 1 Rush Hour with Fixed Blocks is PSPACE-complete},
author = {Josh Brunner and Lily Chung and Erik D. Demaine and Dylan Hendrickson and Adam Hesterberg and Adam Suhl and Avi Zeff},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.09914},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
15 pages, 11 figures. Improved figures and writing. To appear at FUN 2020