{"paper":{"title":"Query Complexity of Mastermind Variants","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.DM"],"primary_cat":"math.CO","authors_text":"Aaron Berger, Christopher Chute, Matthew Stone","submitted_at":"2016-07-15T17:53:09Z","abstract_excerpt":"We study variants of Mastermind, a popular board game in which the objective is sequence reconstruction. In this two-player game, the so-called \\textit{codemaker} constructs a hidden sequence $H = (h_1, h_2, \\ldots, h_n)$ of colors selected from an alphabet $\\mathcal{A} = \\{1,2,\\ldots, k\\}$ (\\textit{i.e.,} $h_i\\in\\mathcal{A}$ for all $i\\in\\{1,2,\\ldots, n\\}$). The game then proceeds in turns, each of which consists of two parts: in turn $t$, the second player (the \\textit{codebreaker}) first submits a query sequence $Q_t = (q_1, q_2, \\ldots, q_n)$ with $q_i\\in \\mathcal{A}$ for all $i$, and seco"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"1607.04597","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}