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Covering a Polyomino-Shaped Stain with Non-Overlapping Identical Stickers

Authors: Keigo Oka, Naoki Inaba, and Akira Iino

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 366, 13th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2026)


Abstract
You find a stain on the wall and decide to cover it with non-overlapping stickers of a single identical shape (rotation and reflection are allowed). Is it possible to find a sticker shape that fails to cover the stain? In this paper, we consider this problem under polyomino constraints and complete the classification of always-coverable stain shapes (polyominoes). We provide proofs for the maximal always-coverable polyominoes and construct concrete counterexamples for the minimal not always-coverable ones, demonstrating that such cases exist even among hole-free polyominoes. This classification consequently yields an algorithm to determine the always-coverability of any given stain. We also show that the problem of determining whether a given sticker can cover a given stain is NP-complete, even though exact cover is not demanded. This result extends to the 1D case where the connectivity requirement is removed. As an illustration of the problem complexity, for a specific hexomino (6-cell) stain, the smallest sticker found in our search that avoids covering it has, although not proven minimum, a bounding box of 325 × 325.

Cite as

Keigo Oka, Naoki Inaba, and Akira Iino. Covering a Polyomino-Shaped Stain with Non-Overlapping Identical Stickers. In 13th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 366, pp. 37:1-37:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)


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@InProceedings{oka_et_al:LIPIcs.FUN.2026.37,
  author =	{Oka, Keigo and Inaba, Naoki and Iino, Akira},
  title =	{{Covering a Polyomino-Shaped Stain with Non-Overlapping Identical Stickers}},
  booktitle =	{13th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2026)},
  pages =	{37:1--37:21},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-417-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{366},
  editor =	{Iacono, John},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FUN.2026.37},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-257560},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FUN.2026.37},
  annote =	{Keywords: polyomino, covering, NP-completeness}
}
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