Sewings of crumpled cubes revisited (Q2463871)

A crumpled cube \(C\subseteq S^n\) is the closure of a complementary component of a (wild) \(S^{n-1}\) in \(S^n\). By a classical result of L.~L.~Lininger, N.~Hosay and the present author, we may (and shall) always assume that the closure of the other complementary component is a closed \(n\)-cell. A homeomorphism \(h\) of the boundaries of two crumpled cubes \(C_1\), \(C_2\) is called a sewing; it yields a sewing space \(S(h)\) via identification. The author gives three conditions in the spirit of the Disjoint Disks Property (DDP) that are related to the condition that \(S(h)\) is a manifold (and then, in fact, a sphere). The DDP requires that any two singular 2-disks in a space may be approximated, arbitrarily closely, by disjoint disks. The conditions introduced here require that any two singular disks \(\mu_i: I^2 \to C_i\) can be approximated by singular disks \(\mu_i'\) that become disjoint after sewing. The three conditions differ with respect to the ranges of the approximating disks. The weakest condition allows that both are maps into the surrounding sphere \(S^n\), and the two stronger ones require that one or both of them map into the respective \(C_i\). The strongest condition is sufficient but not necessary for \(S(h)\) to be a sphere, the weakest one is necessary but not sufficient, and the intermediate condition is neither necessary nor sufficient. It is also shown that the weakest condition becomes sufficient when both of the \(C_i\) satisfy DDP. The same happens to the intermediate condition if just one of the \(C_i\) satisfies DDP.