Tatamibari is NP-complete
Reviewed by Pith T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 kernel pith:B6XLRHZ6record.jsonopen to challenge →
read the original abstract
In the Nikoli pencil-and-paper game Tatamibari, a puzzle consists of an $m \times n$ 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.
This paper has not been read by Pith yet.
discussion (0)
Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.