{"paper":{"title":"The opaque square","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.DM"],"primary_cat":"math.CO","authors_text":"Adrian Dumitrescu, Minghui Jiang","submitted_at":"2013-11-13T22:13:29Z","abstract_excerpt":"The problem of finding small sets that block every line passing through a unit square was first considered by Mazurkiewicz in 1916. We call such a set {\\em opaque} or a {\\em barrier} for the square. The shortest known barrier has length $\\sqrt{2}+ \\frac{\\sqrt{6}}{2}= 2.6389\\ldots$. The current best lower bound for the length of a (not necessarily connected) barrier is $2$, as established by Jones about 50 years ago. No better lower bound is known even if the barrier is restricted to lie in the square or in its close vicinity. Under a suitable locality assumption, we replace this lower bound by"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"1311.3323","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"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"}