Words with Repeated Letters in a Grid

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Halberstam, Zachary, Schildkraut, Carl
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Halberstam, Zachary
Schildkraut, Carl
author_facet Halberstam, Zachary
Schildkraut, Carl
contents Given a word $w$, what is the maximum possible number of appearances of $w$ reading contiguously along any of the directions in $\{-1, 0, 1\}^d \setminus \{\mathbf{0}\}$ in a large $d$-dimensional grid (as in a word search)? Patchell and Spiro first posed a version of this question, which Alon and Kravitz completely answered for a large class of "well-behaved" words, including those with no repeated letters. We study the general case, which exhibits greater variety and is often more complicated (even for $d=1$). We also discuss some connections to other problems in combinatorics, including the storied $n$-queens problem.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_19678
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Words with Repeated Letters in a Grid
Halberstam, Zachary
Schildkraut, Carl
Combinatorics
05D99, 05B30, 05A16, 68R05
Given a word $w$, what is the maximum possible number of appearances of $w$ reading contiguously along any of the directions in $\{-1, 0, 1\}^d \setminus \{\mathbf{0}\}$ in a large $d$-dimensional grid (as in a word search)? Patchell and Spiro first posed a version of this question, which Alon and Kravitz completely answered for a large class of "well-behaved" words, including those with no repeated letters. We study the general case, which exhibits greater variety and is often more complicated (even for $d=1$). We also discuss some connections to other problems in combinatorics, including the storied $n$-queens problem.
title Words with Repeated Letters in a Grid
topic Combinatorics
05D99, 05B30, 05A16, 68R05
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.19678