Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2603.01244

Hexasort -- The Complexity of Stacking Colors on Graphs

Linus Klocker·Simon D. Fink
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Many popular puzzle and matching games have been analyzed through the lens of computational complexity. Prominent examples include Sudoku, Candy Crush, and Flood-It. A common theme among these widely played games is that their generalized decision versions are NP-hard, which is often thought of as a source of their inherent difficulty and addictive appeal to human players. In this paper, we study a popular single-player stacking game commonly known as Hexasort. The game can be modelled as placing colored stacks onto the vertices of a graph, where adjacent stacks of the same color merge and vanish according to deterministic rules. We prove that Hexasort is NP-hard, even when restricted to single-color stacks and progressively more constrained classes of graphs, culminating in strong NP-hardness on trees of either bounded height or degree. Towards fixed-parameter tractable algorithms, we identify settings in which the problem becomes polynomial-time solvable and present dynamic programming algorithms.

Explore related subjects

cs.CC

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Linus Klocker, Simon D. Fink. 2026-03-01. Hexasort -- The Complexity of Stacking Colors on Graphs. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.01244

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Bit-counting complexity classes

We define bit-counting complexity classes whose membership depends on the binary profile of the number of accepting paths of non-deterministic polynomial time Turing machines. We study the relationship between this new family of complexity classes and the classical complexity classes. We prove that the complexity class ${\bf PP}$ is contained in our comparison based bit-counting complexity classes ${\bf B_{|0|=|1|}P}$, ${\bf B_{|0|<|1|}P}$ and ${\bf B_{|0|>|1|}P}$. We then show that the comparison based bit-counting complexity classes and the complexity class ${\bf PP}$ are Turing equivalent, that is ${\bf P}^{\bf PP} = {\bf P}^{{\bf B_{|0|=|1|}P}}={\bf P}^{{\bf B_{|0|>|1|}P}}={\bf P}^{{\bf B_{|0|<|1|}P}}$. We then prove that the complexity classes ${\bf NP}$ and ${\bf CoNP}$ are contained in both of our parity based bit-counting complexity classes ${\bf B_{|0| \oplus}P}$ and ${\bf B_{|1| \oplus}P}$. We also show that the Turing closures of the parity based bit-counting complexity classes coincide, that is ${\bf P}^{{\bf B_{|0|\oplus}P}}={\bf P}^{{\bf B_{|1|\oplus}P}}$. We do this by proving that when either parity based bit-counting complexity class is provided as an oracle for a polynomial time Turing machine, then it can simulate the other one, that is ${\bf B_{|1| \oplus}P}\subseteq {\bf P}^{{\bf B_{|0| \oplus}P}}$ and ${\bf B_{|0| \oplus}P}\subseteq {\bf P}^{{\bf B_{|1| \oplus}P}}$.

cs.CC↗
arXiv2026

Formalizing PARITY Circuit Lower Bounds in Lean

We formalize Hastad's PARITY lower bound in Lean using the switching lemma. For every fixed d >= 2, formulas and DAG circuits of computation depth at most d computing PARITY on n inputs require size exp(Omega_d(n^(1/(d-1)))) for all sufficiently large n. This matches the classical upper bound up to constants in the exponent and implies that PARITY is not in nonuniform AC0. We also construct a polynomial-size, logarithmic-depth bounded-fan-in formula family for PARITY, providing a witness to NC1 is not a subset of AC0 for the formalized models. The Lean source code is available at https://github.com/formalcs/circuit-complexity and is checked with Lean 4.33.1 and mathlib 4.33.1.

cs.CC↗
arXiv2026

Constant-Coin Complete-Information Debates for $\mathsf{P}$ with Arbitrarily Small Strong Error

We study complete-information debate systems in which a probabilistic finite-state verifier reads the alternating messages of a prover and a refuter. Demirci, Say, and Yakaryılmaz showed that every language in $\mathsf{P}$ has such debates checkable with a constant number of random bits and arbitrarily small weak error. Their strong-error construction, which also counts nontermination as failure, did not permit arbitrary error reduction. We close this gap: for every $L\in\mathsf{P}$ and every $\varepsilon>0$, there is a constant-space verifier using a constant number of private coin tosses that has perfect completeness and strong error at most $\varepsilon$. The verifier simulates a polynomial-time alternating multihead finite automaton, privately spot-checking one of its input heads. The key observation is that, on a nonmember, the refuter may concede any round in which the prover first misreports a head reading. This ensures termination against every prover when the refuter follows the specified strategy, and permits strong-error reduction by repetition.

cs.CC↗