The Reversed Zeckendorf Game (Q6928558)

\textit{E. Zeckendorf} [Bull. Soc. R. Sci. Liège 41, 179--182 (1972; Zbl 0252.10011)] showed that every positive integer admits a unique decomposition as a sum of nonconsecutive Fibonacci numbers. The Zeckendorf game is a two-player impartial combinatorial game in which players alternately apply local combining and splitting moves -- coming from the Fibonacci recurrence -- to a partition of a fixed integer \(n\) into Fibonacci numbers. Starting from \(n\) copies of \(F_1=1\), the game terminates at the Zeckendorf decomposition of \(n\) when no move can be applied. Previous work established nonconstructively that Player 2 has a winning strategy for all \(n\ge 3\).\N\NIn this paper the authors study the \textit{reversed} Zeckendorf game, obtained by reversing all legal moves of the ``forward'' game and exchanging the starting and terminal positions (i.e., reversing all the edges of the game graph). The reversed game therefore begins at the Zeckendorf decomposition of \(n\) and ends at the configuration consisting entirely of ones. This reversal alters the structure and produces a new behavior. They show that Player 1 has a winning strategy in the reversed Zeckendorf game when \(n=F_{i+1}+F_{i-2}\). They prove this result both nonconstructively via strategy-stealing and constructively via an explicit strategy. Computational evidence suggest that Player 2 wins for infinitely many values of \(n\), the authors conjecture that asymptotically Player 1 wins a proportion \(\varphi^{-1}\simeq .618\) of all games. They also adapt known results on game lengths and random play to this reversed setting. Finally, the reversed game is solved for several restricted families of starting positions, including configurations involving only ones, twos, and threes.