A short solution to Hironaka's polyhedra game (Q2468826)

Summary: Hironaka's polyhedra game was proposed by Hironaka in 1970 in connection with his theorem on resolution of singularities. In 1983 \textit{M. Spivakovsky} found a winning strategy for this game [Prog. Math. 36, 419--432 (1983; Zbl 0531.14009)]. In this paper the author considers a similar (and in some sense equivalent) polyhedral game: Let \(N\) be the Newton polyhedron of finitely many points in the positive orthant \(\mathbb R^n\). At each step player A chooses a subset \(J\) in \(\{1,\dots,n\}\) and player B chooses \(j\in J\). Then the linear transformation \[ x_j\mapsto \sum_{i\in J}x_i,\quad x_k\mapsto x_k,\;k\neq j \] is performed on \(N\). Player A wins if after a sequence of steps \(N\) becomes a translation of the orthant. The author presents a simple winning strategy for player A. He shows how his game and Hironaka's original game are related and compares his strategy to Spivakovsky's strategy.