Zig-Zag Numberlink is NP-Complete

• Main Authors: Adcock, Aaron (Author), Reidl, Felix (Author), Demaine, Erik D. (Contributor), Demaine, Martin L. (Contributor), O'Brien, Michael P. (Author), Villaamil, Fernando Sanchez (Author), Sullivan, Blair D. (Author)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Information Processing Society of Japan, 2015-11-23T17:47:19Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

When can t terminal pairs in an m × n grid be connected by t vertex-disjoint paths that cover all vertices of the grid? We prove that this problem is NP-complete. Our hardness result can be compared to two previous NP-hardness proofs: Lynch's 1975 proof without the "cover all vertices" constraint, and Kotsuma and Takenaga's 2010 proof when the paths are restricted to have the fewest possible corners within their homotopy class. The latter restriction is a common form of the famous Nikoli puzzle Numberlink. Our problem is another common form of Numberlink, sometimes called Zig-Zag Numberlink and popularized by the smartphone app Flow Free.
National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant CCF-1161626)
United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research Grant FA9550-12-1-0423)