A lower bound for the number of Reidemeister moves of type III (Q2502933)

It is well known that if two knot diagrams give mutually ambient isotopic knots then they are related by a sequence of three types of Reidemeister moves and isotopies of the plane. The paper under review studies the minimal number of Reidemeister type III moves needed for two given knot diagrams of the same knot. Here the Reidemeister moves of types I and II are freely allowed. The authors determine such numbers for three pairs of diagrams for the trefoil knot, the figure eight knot and the torus link of type \((2,4)\). The proof uses Fox \(n\)-colorings of links.