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Tatamibari Is NP-Complete

Authors Aviv Adler, Jeffrey Bosboom, Erik D. Demaine, Martin L. Demaine, Quanquan C. Liu, Jayson Lynch

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  • Theory of computation → Problems, reductions and completeness
Keywords
  • Nikoli puzzles
  • NP-hardness
  • rectangle covering

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Abstract

In the Nikoli pencil-and-paper game Tatamibari, a puzzle consists of an m x n grid of cells, where each cell possibly contains a clue among ⊞, ⊟, ◫.  The goal is to partition the grid into disjoint rectangles, where every rectangle contains exactly one clue, rectangles containing ⊞ are square, rectangles containing ⊟ are strictly longer horizontally than vertically, rectangles containing ◫ are strictly longer vertically than horizontally, and no four rectangles share a corner. We prove this puzzle NP-complete, establishing a Nikoli gap of 16 years. Along the way, we introduce a gadget framework for proving hardness of similar puzzles involving area coverage, and show that it applies to an existing NP-hardness proof for Spiral Galaxies. We also present a mathematical puzzle font for Tatamibari.

Cite As Get BibTex

Aviv Adler, Jeffrey Bosboom, Erik D. Demaine, Martin L. Demaine, Quanquan C. Liu, and Jayson Lynch. Tatamibari Is NP-Complete. In 10th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 157, pp. 1:1-1:24, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2020) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.FUN.2021.1

Author Details

Aviv Adler
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Jeffrey Bosboom
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Erik D. Demaine
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Martin L. Demaine
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Quanquan C. Liu
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Jayson Lynch
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

Acknowledgements

This work was initiated during open problem solving in the MIT class on Algorithmic Lower Bounds: Fun with Hardness Proofs (6.890) taught by Erik Demaine in Fall 2014. We thank the other participants of that class for related discussions and providing an inspiring atmosphere.

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References

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