Young tableaux and Solitaire bulgare (Q1180552)

In the game Soltaire Bulgare, one is initially given \(n\) stones disposed in several heaps. A move consists of taking exactly one stone from each heap and forming with these a new heap. By repeating this operation a sufficiently large number of times one obtains eventually a periodic sequence of positions. In particular, if \(n\) is triangular, i.e. \(n=k(k+1)/2\), then the final period is one. Here, a conjecture of Knuth claiming that for triangular \(n\) the length of the game is at most \(k(k- 1)\), is proved and generalized for any integer \(n\). The techniques involved rely on Young tableaux.