Some results on LCTR, an impartial game on partitions (Q6174698)

In this paper, the authors study a new impartial game called LCTR and played on integer partitions. Positions of LCTR are partitions (i.e., Young diagrams). Players take turns removing either the left-most column or the top row of the corresponding Young diagram, normal play convention is considered. They determine Sprague-Grundy values for certain infinite families of partitions (these values are bounded by \(2\) for any partition) and prove some complexity results. By analyzing the sparseness of the positions reachable from a given partition of \(n\), they use a dynamic programming approach which determines the corresponding Sprague-Grundy value in \(O(n)\) time.