相关论文: Even $1 \times n$ Edge-Matching and Jigsaw Puzzles…

We analyze the computational complexity of several new variants of edge-matching puzzles. First we analyze inequality (instead of equality) constraints between adjacent tiles, proving the problem NP-complete for strict inequalities but…

Edge-matching problems, also called edge matching puzzles, are abstractions of placement problems with neighborhood conditions. Pieces with colored edges have to be placed on a board such that adjacent edges have the same color. The problem…

We study the complexity of symmetric assembly puzzles: given a collection of simple polygons, can we translate, rotate, and possibly flip them so that their interior-disjoint union is line symmetric? On the negative side, we show that the…

We study a family of sorting match puzzles on grids, which we call permutation match puzzles. In this puzzle, each row and column of a $n \times n$ grid is labeled with an ordering constraint -- ascending (A) or descending (D) -- and the…

In the field of algorithmic self-assembly, a long-standing unproven conjecture has been that of the NP-hardness of binary pattern tile set synthesis (2-PATS). The $k$-PATS problem is that of designing a tile assembly system with the…

A colouring of the edges of an $n \times n$ grid is said to be \emph{reconstructible} if the colouring is uniquely determined by the multiset of its $n^2$ \emph{tiles}, where the tile corresponding to a vertex of the grid specifies the…

We revisit a classical crossword filling puzzle which already appeared in Garey\&Jonhson's book. We are given a grid with $n$ vertical and horizontal slots and a dictionary with $m$ words and are asked to place words from the dictionary in…

The 15 puzzle is a classic reconfiguration puzzle with fifteen uniquely labeled unit squares within a $4 \times 4$ board in which the goal is to slide the squares (without ever overlapping) into a target configuration. By generalizing the…

Let $G$ be a complete edge-weighted graph on $n$ vertices. To each subset of vertices of $G$ assign the cost of the minimum spanning tree of the subset as its weight. Suppose that $n$ is a multiple of some fixed positive integer $k$. The…

We propose a new kind of sliding-block puzzle, called Gourds, where the objective is to rearrange 1 x 2 pieces on a hexagonal grid board of 2n + 1 cells with n pieces, using sliding, turning and pivoting moves. This puzzle has a single…

A graph is near-planar if it can be obtained from a planar graph by adding an edge. We show the surprising fact that it is NP-hard to compute the crossing number of near-planar graphs. A graph is 1-planar if it has a drawing where every…

We study noncrossing geometric graphs and their disjoint compatible geometric matchings. Given a cycle (a polygon) P we want to draw a set of pairwise disjoint straight-line edges with endpoints on the vertices of P such that these new…

We prove that the 2017 puzzle game ZHED is NP-complete, even with just 1 tiles. Such a puzzle is defined by a set of unit-square 1 tiles in a square grid, and a target square of the grid. A move consists of selecting an unselected 1 tile…

Discrete tomography deals with reconstructing finite spatial objects from lower dimensional projections and has applications for example in timetable design. In this paper we consider the problem of reconstructing a tile packing from its…

A graph $G$ is embeddable in $\mathbb{R}^d$ if vertices of $G$ can be assigned with points of $\mathbb{R}^d$ in such a way that all pairs of adjacent vertices are at the distance 1. We show that verifying embeddability of a given graph in…

It is well-known that the question of whether a given finite region can be tiled with a given set of tiles is NP-complete. We show that the same is true for the right tromino and square tetromino on the square lattice, or for the right…

This work explores the relationship between solution space and time complexity in the context of the $\textbf{P}$ vs. $\textbf{NP}$ problem, particularly through the lens of the sliding tile puzzle and root finding algorithms. We focus on…

In the "Game about Squares" the task is to push unit squares on an integer lattice onto corresponding dots. A square can only be moved into one given direction. When a square is pushed onto a lattice point with an arrow the direction of the…

Two kinds of approximation algorithms exist for the k-BALANCED PARTITIONING problem: those that are fast but compute unsatisfying approximation ratios, and those that guarantee high quality ratios but are slow. In this paper we prove that…

A random jigsaw puzzle is constructed by arranging $n^2$ square pieces into an $n \times n$ grid and assigning to each edge of a piece one of $q$ available colours uniformly at random, with the restriction that touching edges receive the…