Single-Player and Two-Player Buttons & Scissors Games

We study the computational complexity of the Buttons \& Scissors game and obtain sharp thresholds with respect to several parameters. Specifically we show that the game is NP-complete for $C = 2$ colors but polytime solvable for $C = 1$. Similarly the game is NP-complete if every color is used by at most $F = 4$ buttons but polytime solvable for $F \leq 3$. We also consider restrictions on the board size, cut directions, and cut sizes. Finally, we introduce several natural two-player versions of the game and show that they are PSPACE-complete.Comment: 21 pages, 15 figures. Presented at JCDCG2 2015, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, September 14 - 16, 201

Single-Player and Two-Player Buttons & Scissors Games

We study the computational complexity of the Buttons \& Scissors game and obtain sharp thresholds with respect to several parameters. Specifically we show that the game is NP-complete for C=2 colors but polytime solvable for C=1. Similarly the game is NP-complete if every color is used by at most F=4 buttons but polytime solvable for F≤3. We also consider restrictions on the board size, cut directions, and cut sizes. Finally, we introduce several natural two-player versions of the game and show that they are PSPACE-complete