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Completing some Partial Latin Squares
AbstractWe show that any partial 3 r× 3 r Latin square whose filled cells lie in two disjoint r×r sub-squares can be completed. We do this by proving the more general result that any partial 3 r by 3 r Latin square, with filled cells in the top left 2r× 2 r square, for which there is a pairing of the columns so that in each row there is a filled cell in at most one of each matched pair of columns, can be completed if and only if there is some way to fill the cells of the top left 2 r× 2 r square
An analogue of Ryser's Theorem for partial Sudoku squares
In 1956 Ryser gave a necessary and sufficient condition for a partial latin
rectangle to be completable to a latin square. In 1990 Hilton and Johnson
showed that Ryser's condition could be reformulated in terms of Hall's
Condition for partial latin squares. Thus Ryser's Theorem can be interpreted as
saying that any partial latin rectangle can be completed if and only if
satisfies Hall's Condition for partial latin squares.
We define Hall's Condition for partial Sudoku squares and show that Hall's
Condition for partial Sudoku squares gives a criterion for the completion of
partial Sudoku rectangles that is both necessary and sufficient. In the
particular case where , , , the result is especially simple, as
we show that any partial -Sudoku rectangle can be completed
(no further condition being necessary).Comment: 19 pages, 10 figure
Completion and deficiency problems
Given a partial Steiner triple system (STS) of order , what is the order
of the smallest complete STS it can be embedded into? The study of this
question goes back more than 40 years. In this paper we answer it for
relatively sparse STSs, showing that given a partial STS of order with at
most triples, it can always be embedded into a complete
STS of order , which is asymptotically optimal. We also obtain
similar results for completions of Latin squares and other designs.
This suggests a new, natural class of questions, called deficiency problems.
Given a global spanning property and a graph , we define the
deficiency of the graph with respect to the property to be
the smallest positive integer such that the join has property
. To illustrate this concept we consider deficiency versions of
some well-studied properties, such as having a -decomposition,
Hamiltonicity, having a triangle-factor and having a perfect matching in
hypergraphs.
The main goal of this paper is to propose a systematic study of these
problems; thus several future research directions are also given
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