相关论文: Coin-Moving Puzzles

We define a general framework of partition games for formulating two-player pebble games over finite structures. We show that one particular such game, which we call the invertible-map game, yields a family of polynomial-time approximations…

We investigate the reconfiguration of $n$ blocks, or "tokens", in the square grid using "line pushes". A line push is performed from one of the four cardinal directions and pushes all tokens that are maximum in that direction to the…

We study so-called invariant games played with a fixed number $d$ of heaps of matches. A game is described by a finite list $\mathcal{M}$ of integer vectors of length $d$ specifying the legal moves. A move consists in changing the current…

Quixo is a two-player game played on a 5$\times$5 grid where the players try to align five identical symbols. Specifics of the game require the usage of novel techniques. Using a combination of value iteration and backward induction, we…

We define the class of "simple recursive games". A simple recursive game is defined as a simple stochastic game (a notion due to Anne Condon), except that we allow arbitrary real payoffs but disallow moves of chance. We study the complexity…

We prove the computational intractability of rotating and placing $n$ square tiles into a $1 \times n$ array such that adjacent tiles are compatible--either equal edge colors, as in edge-matching puzzles, or matching tab/pocket shapes, as…

The New York Times (NYT) games have found widespread popularity in recent years and reportedly account for an increasing fraction of the newspaper's readership. In this paper, we bring the computational lens to the study of New York Times…

Triangular peg solitaire is a well-known one-person game or puzzle. When one peg captures many pegs consecutively, this is called a sweep. We investigate whether the game can end in a dramatic fashion, with one peg sweeping all remaining…

This paper is inspired by the PQ penny flip game. It employs group-theoretic concepts to study the original game and also its possible extensions. We show that the PQ penny flip game can be associated with the dihedral group $D_{8}$. We…

We analyze the computational complexity of the popular computer games Threes!, 1024!, 2048 and many of their variants. For most known versions expanded to an m x n board, we show that it is NP-hard to decide whether a given starting…

Parity games play an important role in model checking and synthesis. In their paper, Calude et al. have shown that these games can be solved in quasi-polynomial time. We show that their algorithm can be implemented efficiently: we use their…

Positional games are a well-studied class of combinatorial game. In their usual form, two players take turns to play moves in a set (`the board'), and certain subsets are designated as `winning': the first person to occupy such a set wins…

Despite its long history, the classical game of peg solitaire continues to attract the attention of the scientific community. In this paper, we consider two problems with an algorithmic flavour which are related with this game, namely…

Numberlink is a puzzle game in which players are given a grid with nodes marked with a natural number, $n$, and asked to create $n$ connections with neighboring nodes. Connections can only be made with top, bottom, left and right neighbors,…

We prove computational intractability of variants of checkers: (1) deciding whether there is a move that forces the other player to win in one move is NP-complete; (2) checkers where players must always be able to jump on their turn is…

We introduce a two player game on an n x n chessboard where queens are placed by alternating turns on a chessboard square whose availability is determined by the number of queens already on the board which can attack that square modulo two.…

Two-player games on graphs is central in many problems in formal verification and program analysis such as synthesis and verification of open systems. In this work we consider solving recursive game graphs (or pushdown game graphs) that can…

In this note, we investigate combinatorial games where both players move randomly (each turn, independently selecting a legal move uniformly at random). In this model, we provide closed-form expressions for the expected number of turns in a…

We apply several quantization schemes to simple versions of the Chinos game. Classically, for two players with one coin each, there is a symmetric stable strategy that allows each player to win half of the times on average. A partial…

We provide two methodologies in the area of computation theory to solve optimal strategies for board games such as Xi Gua Qi and Go. From experimental results, we find relevance to graph theory, matrix representation, and mathematical…