English

On the Sprague-Grundy function of compound games

Combinatorics 2019-03-20 v1

Abstract

The classical game of {\sc Nim} can be naturally extended and played on an arbitrary hypergraph \cH2V{}\cH \subseteq 2^V \setminus \{\emptyset\} whose vertices V={1,,n}V = \{1, \ldots, n\} correspond to piles of stones. By one move a player chooses an edge HH of \cH\cH and reduces arbitrarily all piles iHi \in H. In 1901 Bouton solved the classical {\sc Nim} for which \cH={{1},,{n}}\cH = \{\{1\}, \ldots, \{n\}\}. In 1910 Moore introduced and solved a more general game kk-{\sc Nim}, for which \cH={HVHk}\cH = \{H \subseteq V \mid |H| \leq k\}, where 1k<n1 \leq k < n. In 1980 Jenkyns and Mayberry obtained an explicit formula for the Sprague-Grundy function of Moore's {\sc Nim} for the case k+1=nk+1 = n. Recently it was shown that the same formula works for a large class of hypergraphs. In this paper we study combinatorial properties of these hypergraphs and obtain explicit formulas for the Sprague-Grundy functions of the conjunctive and selective compounds of the corresponding hypergraph {\sc Nim} games.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1903.08138,
  title  = {On the Sprague-Grundy function of compound games},
  author = {Endre Boros and Vladimir Gurvich and Levi Kitrossky and Kazuhisa Makino},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.08138},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

20 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-23T08:13:08.157Z