Finding tight single-change covering designs with \(v=20, k=5\) (Q5937605)

A tight single-change covering design (tsccd) is an ordered set of \(k\)-element subsets (called blocks) out of a \(v\)-set such that (i) each pair of the \(v\)-set is contained in at least one block; (ii) consecutive blocks differ in only one element; and (iii) an element newly introduced in a block \(B\) has not previously appeared in the same block as any of the other elements in \(B\). If one wants to point out the values of \(v\) and \(k\), the design is called a \(\text{tsccd}(v,k)\). In this paper, it is shown that tsccd's with \(k>4\) exist by finding several \(\text{tsccd}(20,5)\)'s, two of which are listed in the paper. These designs were found in an extensive backtrack search utilizing various heuristics.