Abstract
We consider two-player constraint satisfaction games on systems of Boolean constraints, in which the players take turns in selecting one of the available variables and setting it to true or false, with the goal of maximising (for Player I) or minimising (for Player II) the number of satisfied constraints. Unlike in standard QBF-type variable assignment games, we impose no order in which the variables are to be played. This makes the game setup more natural, but also more challenging to control. We provide polynomial-time, constant-factor approximation strategies for Player I when the constraints are parity functions or threshold functions with a threshold that is small compared to the arity of the constraints. Also, we prove that the problem of determining if Player I can satisfy all constraints is PSPACE-complete even in this unordered setting, and when the constraints are disjunctions of at most 6 literals (an unordered-game analogue of 6-QBF).
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alur, R., Henzinger, T.A., Kupferman, O.: Alternating-time temporal logic. J. ACM 49(5), 672–713 (2002)
Ansótegui, C., Gomes, C.P., Selman, B.: The Achilles’ heel of QBF. In: Proc. 20th Natl. Conf. on Artificial Intelligence and 17th Conf. on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI/IAAI 2005), pp. 275–281 (2005)
Benedetti, M., Lallouet, A., Vautard, J.: QCSP made practical by virtue of restricted quantification. In: Proc. 20th Intl. Joint Conf. on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2007), pp. 38–43 (2007)
Benedetti, M., Lallouet, A., Vautard, J.: Quantified Constraint Optimization. In: Stuckey, P.J. (ed.) CP 2008. LNCS, vol. 5202, pp. 463–477. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Bodlaender, H.L.: On the complexity of some coloring games. Int. J. Found. Comput. Sci. 2(2), 133–147 (1991)
Börner, F., Bulatov, A.A., Chen, H., Jeavons, P., Krokhin, A.A.: The complexity of constraint satisfaction games and QCSP. Inf. Comput. 207(9), 923–944 (2009)
Chen, H.: The complexity of quantified constraint satisfaction: Collapsibility, sink algebras, and the three-element case. SIAM J. Comput. 37(5), 1674–1701 (2008)
Chen, H., Pál, M.: Optimization, Games, and Quantified Constraint Satisfaction. In: Fiala, J., Koubek, V., Kratochvíl, J. (eds.) MFCS 2004. LNCS, vol. 3153, pp. 239–250. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Condon, A., Feigenbaum, J., Lund, C., Shor, P.W.: Probabilistically checkable debate systems and nonapproximability of PSPACE-hard functions. Chicago J. Theor. Comput. Sci. 4 (1995)
Demaine, E.D.: Playing Games with Algorithms: Algorithmic Combinatorial Game Theory. In: Sgall, J., Pultr, A., Kolman, P. (eds.) MFCS 2001. LNCS, vol. 2136, pp. 18–32. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)
Even, S., Tarjan, R.E.: A combinatorial problem which is complete in polynomial space. J. ACM 23(4), 710–719 (1976)
Fraenkel, A.S.: Complexity, appeal and challenges of combinatorial games. Theor. Comput. Sci. 303(3), 393–415 (2004)
Hunt III, H.B., Marathe, M.V., Stearns, R.E.: Complexity and approximability of quantified and stochastic constraint satisfaction problems. Electronic Notes in Discrete Mathematics 9, 217–230 (2001)
Johnson, D.S.: Approximation algorithms for combinatorial problems. J. Comput. Syst. Sci. 9(3), 256–278 (1974)
Khanna, S., Sudan, M., Trevisan, L., Williamson, D.P.: The approximability of constraint satisfaction problems. SIAM J. Comput. 30(6), 1863–1920 (2000)
Madelaine, F.R., Martin, B.: A tetrachotomy for positive first-order logic without equality. In: Proc. 26th Ann. IEEE Symp. on Logic in Computer Science (LICS 2011), pp. 311–320 (2011)
Ramadge, P., Wonham, W.: The control of discrete event systems. Proc. of the IEEE 77(1), 81–98 (1989)
Schaefer, T.J.: On the complexity of some two-person perfect-information games. J. Comput. Syst. Sci. 16(2), 185–225 (1978)
Stockmeyer, L.J., Meyer, A.R.: Word problems requiring exponential time: Preliminary report. In: Proc. 5th Ann. ACM Symp. on Theory of Computing (STOC 1973), pp. 1–9 (1973)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Ahlroth, L., Orponen, P. (2012). Unordered Constraint Satisfaction Games. In: Rovan, B., Sassone, V., Widmayer, P. (eds) Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science 2012. MFCS 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7464. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32589-2_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32589-2_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-32588-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-32589-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)