PP-2006-18: Sevenster, Merlijn (2006) The Complexity of Scotland Yard. [Report]
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Abstract
This paper discusses a case study of the board game of Scotland Yard
from a computational perspective. Interestingly, Scotland Yard is a
genuine "playgame" with imperfect information. For reasons not
completely clear to me, games with imperfect information have escaped
the interest of researchers in Algorithmic combinatorial
game-theory. I show by means of a powerset argument, that Scotland
Yard can also be considered a game of perfect information, that is
surprisingly similar to the original game - up to isomorphism, that
is. Using the powerset analysis, I show that Scotland Yard has
PSPACE- complete complexity be it with or without imperfect
information. In fact, imperfect information may even simplify matters:
if the cops are supposed to be consequently ignorant of Mr. X's
whereabouts throughout the game the complexity is 'but' NP-complete.
| Item Type: | Report |
|---|---|
| Report Nr: | PP-2006-18 |
| Series Name: | Prepublication (PP) Series |
| Year: | 2006 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Computational complexity, Scotland Yard, Imperfect information |
| Date Deposited: | 12 Oct 2016 14:36 |
| Last Modified: | 12 Oct 2016 14:36 |
| URI: | https://eprints.illc.uva.nl/id/eprint/193 |
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