The Computational Complexity of the Game of Set and its Theoretical Applications

The game of SET is a popular card game in which the objective is to form Sets using cards from a special deck. In this paper we study single- and multi-round variations of this game from the computational complexity point of view and establish interesting connections with other classical computational problems. Specifically, we first show that a natural generalization of the problem of finding a single Set, parameterized by the size of the sought Set is W-hard; our reduction applies also to a natural parameterization of Perfect Multi-Dimensional Matching, a result which may be of independent interest. Second, we observe that a version of the game where one seeks to find the largest possible number of disjoint Sets from a given set of cards is a special case of 3-Set Packing; we establish that this restriction remains NP-complete. Similarly, the version where one seeks to find the smallest number of disjoint Sets that overlap all possible Sets is shown to be NP-complete, through a close connection to the Independent Edge Dominating Set problem. Finally, we study a 2-player version of the game, for which we show a close connection to Arc Kayles, as well as fixed-parameter tractability when parameterized by the number of rounds played

Games on interval and permutation graph representations

We describe combinatorial games on graphs in which two players antagonistically build a representation of a subgraph of a given graph. We show that for a large class of these games, determining whether a given instance is a winning position for the next player is PSPACE-hard. In contrast, we give polynomial time algorithms for solving some versions of the games on trees

The Computational Complexity of Some Games and Puzzles With Theoretical Applications

The subject of this thesis is the algorithmic properties of one- and two-player games people enjoy playing, such as Sudoku or Chess. Questions asked about puzzles and games in this context are of the following type: can we design efficient computer programs that play optimally given any opponent (for a two-player game), or solve any instance of the puzzle in question? We examine four games and puzzles and show algorithmic as well as intractability results. First, we study the wolf-goat-cabbage puzzle, where a man wants to transport a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage across a river by using a boat that can carry only one item at a time, making sure that no incompatible items are left alone together. We study generalizations of this puzzle, showing a close connection with the Vertex Cover problem that implies NP-hardness as well as inapproximability results. Second, we study the SET game, a card game where the objective is to form sets of cards that match in a certain sense using cards from a special deck. We study single- and multi-round variations of this game and establish interesting con- nections with other classical computational problems, such as Perfect Multi- Dimensional Matching, Set Packing, Independent Edge Dominating Set, and Arc Kayles. We prove algorithmic and hardness results in the classical and the parameterized sense. Third, we study the UNO game, a game of colored numbered cards where players take turns discarding cards that match either in color or in number. We extend results by Demaine et. al. (2010 and 2014) that connected one- and two-player generaliza- tions of the game to Edge Hamiltonian Path and Generalized Geography, proving that a solitaire version parameterized by the number of colors is fixed param- eter tractable and that a k-player generalization for k greater or equal to 3 is PSPACE-hard. Finally, we study the Scrabble game, a word game where players are trying to form words in a crossword fashion by placing letter tiles on a grid board. We prove that a generalized version of Scrabble is PSPACE-hard, answering a question posed by Demaine and Hearn in 2008