TY - JOUR
T1 - Leprechauns on the chessboard
AU - Escamocher, Guillaume
AU - O'Sullivan, Barry
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s)
PY - 2021/5
Y1 - 2021/5
N2 - We introduce in this paper leprechauns, fairy chess pieces that can move either like the standard queen, or to any tile within k king moves. We then study the problem of placing n leprechauns on an n×n chessboard. When k=1, this is equivalent to the standard n-Queens Problem. We solve the problem for k=2, as well as for k>2 and n≤(k+1)2, giving in the process an upper bound on the lowest non-trivial value of n such that the (k,n)-Leprechauns Problem is satisfiable. Solving this problem for all k would be equivalent to solving the diverse n-Queens Problem, the variant of the n-Queens Problem where the distance between the two closest queens is maximized. While diversity has been a popular topic in other constraint problems, this is not the case for the n-Queens Problem, making our results the first major ones in the domain.
AB - We introduce in this paper leprechauns, fairy chess pieces that can move either like the standard queen, or to any tile within k king moves. We then study the problem of placing n leprechauns on an n×n chessboard. When k=1, this is equivalent to the standard n-Queens Problem. We solve the problem for k=2, as well as for k>2 and n≤(k+1)2, giving in the process an upper bound on the lowest non-trivial value of n such that the (k,n)-Leprechauns Problem is satisfiable. Solving this problem for all k would be equivalent to solving the diverse n-Queens Problem, the variant of the n-Queens Problem where the distance between the two closest queens is maximized. While diversity has been a popular topic in other constraint problems, this is not the case for the n-Queens Problem, making our results the first major ones in the domain.
KW - Assignment diversity
KW - Constraint satisfaction
KW - n-Queens Problem
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85100438564
U2 - 10.1016/j.disc.2021.112316
DO - 10.1016/j.disc.2021.112316
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85100438564
SN - 0012-365X
VL - 344
JO - Discrete Mathematics
JF - Discrete Mathematics
IS - 5
M1 - 112316
ER -