Playing Dominoes Is Hard, Except by Yourself

Author(s)
Demaine, Erik D.; Ma, Fermi P.; Waingarten, Erik
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Abstract
Dominoes is a popular and well-known game possibly dating back three millennia. Players are given a set of domino tiles, each with two labeled square faces, and take turns connecting them into a growing chain of dominoes by matching identical faces. We show that single-player dominoes is in P, while multiplayer dominoes is hard: when players cooperate, the game is NP-complete, and when players compete, the game is PSPACE-complete. In addition, we show that these hardness results easily extend to games involving team play.
Date issued
2014
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/99993
Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Journal
Fun with Algorithms
Publisher
Springer-Verlag
Citation
Demaine, Erik D., Fermi Ma, and Erik Waingarten. “Playing Dominoes Is Hard, Except by Yourself.” Fun with Algorithms (2014): 137–146.
Version: Author's final manuscript
ISBN
978-3-319-07889-2
978-3-319-07890-8
ISSN
0302-9743
1611-3349
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