English

Permutations of counters on a table

Combinatorics 2024-03-01 v2

Abstract

We consider a game in which a blindfolded player attempts to set nn counters lying on the vertices of a rotating regular nn-gon table simultaneously to 00. When the counters count(modm)\pmod{m} we simplify the argument of Bar Yehuda, Etzion, and Moran (1993) showing that the player can win if and only if n=1n = 1, m=1m = 1, or (n,m)=(pa,pb)(n, m) = (p^a, p^b) for some prime pp and a,bNa, b \in \mathbb{N}. We broadly generalize the result to the setting where the counters can be permuted by any element of a subset of the symmetric group SSnS \subseteq S_n, with the original formulation corresponding to S=ZnS = \mathbb{Z}_n (rotations of the table).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2112.04965,
  title  = {Permutations of counters on a table},
  author = {Samuel Korsky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.04965},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

7 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-24T08:10:51.515Z