Hat Guessing Numbers of Strongly Degenerate Graphs

DOI10.1137/22M1479154MaRDI QIDQ6161264zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Charlotte Knierim, Anders Martinsson, Raphael Steiner

Publication date 27 June 2023

Published in SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.09619

zbMATH Keywords

degeneracyouterplanar graphsbounded expansionhat guessing numberhat chromatic numberWinkler's hat game

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Random graphs (graph-theoretic aspects) (05C80) Planar graphs; geometric and topological aspects of graph theory (05C10) Vertex degrees (05C07) Coloring of graphs and hypergraphs (05C15) Games on graphs (graph-theoretic aspects) (05C57) Structural characterization of families of graphs (05C75) Graph minors (05C83) Games involving graphs (91A43)

Abstract: Assume $n$ players are placed on the $n$ vertices of a graph $G$. The following game was introduced by Winkler: An adversary puts a hat on each player, where each hat has a colour out of $q$ available colours. The players can see the hat of each of their neighbours in $G$, but not their own hat. Using a prediscussed guessing strategy, the players then simultaneously guess the colour of their hat. The players win if at least one of them guesses correctly, else the adversary wins. The largest integer $q$ such that there is a winning strategy for the players is denoted by $extHG(G)$, and this is called the hat guessing number of $G$. Although this game has received a lot of attention in the recent years, not much is known about how the hat guessing number relates to other graph parameters. For instance, a natural open question is whether the hat guessing number can be bounded from above in terms of degeneracy. In this paper, we prove that the hat guessing number of a graph can be bounded from above in terms of a related notion, which we call strong degeneracy. We further give an exact characterisation of graphs with bounded strong degeneracy. As a consequence, we significantly improve the best known upper bound on the hat guessing number of outerplanar graphs from $2^{125000}$ to $40$, and further derive upper bounds on the hat guessing number for any class of $K_{2,s}$-free graphs with bounded expansion, such as the class of $C_4$-free planar graphs, more generally $K_{2,s}$-free graphs with bounded Hadwiger number or without a $K_t$-subdivision, and for ErdH{o}s-R'enyi random graphs with constant average degree.

Recommendations

• Hat guessing numbers of degenerate graphs
• On the hat guessing number of graphs
• On the hat guessing number of a planar graph class
• The hat guessing number of graphs
• The Hats game. On maximum degree and diameter

Cites work

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Cited in

(10)

• Hat guessing numbers of degenerate graphs
• On the hat guessing number of a planar graph class
• The guessing number of undirected graphs
• Hat guessing number for the class of planar graphs is at least 22
• The hat guessing game on cactus graphs and cycles
• The hat guessing number of graphs
• Hat guessing on books and windmills
• On the hat guessing number of graphs
• Prisoners in a line transmitting (binary+ ) bits of information
• Hat chromatic number of graphs

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