On the complexity of rolling block and Alice mazes

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Date

Advisors/Reviewers

Further Contributors

Contributing Institutions

Publisher

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

License

Abstract

We investigate the computational complexity of two maze problems, namely rolling block and Alice mazes. Simply speaking, in the former game one has to roll blocks through a maze, ending in a particular game situation, and in the latter one, one has to move tokens of variable speed through a maze following some prescribed directions. It turns out that when the number of blocks or the number of tokens is not restricted (unbounded), then the problem of solving such a maze becomes PSPACE-complete. Hardness is shown via a reduction from the nondeterministic constraint logic (NCL) of Demaine and Hearn to the problems in question. In this way we improve on a previous PSPACE-completeness result of Buchin and Buchin on rolling block mazes to best possible. Moreover, we also consider bounded variants of these maze games, i.e., when the number of blocks or tokens is bounded by a constant, and prove close relations to variants of graph reachability problems.

Link to publications or other datasets

Description

Notes

Original publication in

Original publication in

Anthology

URI of original publication

Forschungsdaten

Series

IFIG Research Report; 1202 / 2012

Citation