Playing mastermind with constant-size memory

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Abstract

We analyze the classic board game of Mastermind with n holes and a constant number of colors. The classic result of Chvátal (Combinatorica 3 (1983), 325-329) states that the codebreaker can find the secret code with Θ(n/logn) questions. We show that this bound remains valid if the codebreaker may only store a constant number of guesses and answers. In addition to an intrinsic interest in this question, our result also disproves a conjecture of Droste, Jansen, and Wegener (Theory of Computing Systems 39 (2006), 525-544) on the memory-restricted black-box complexity of the OneMax function class.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication29th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science, STACS 2012
Pages441-452
Number of pages12
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2012
Externally publishedYes
Event29th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science, STACS 2012 - Paris, France
Duration: 29 Feb 20123 Mar 2012

Publication series

NameLeibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, LIPIcs
Volume14
ISSN (Print)1868-8969

Conference

Conference29th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science, STACS 2012
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityParis
Period29/02/123/03/12

Keywords

  • Algorithms
  • Black-box complexity
  • Mastermind
  • Memory-restricted algorithms
  • Query complexity

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