Some strategies for higher dimensional animal achievement games (Q932671)

The paper considers a strong animal (polyomino) achievement game, i.e. a game in which two players (black and white) alternately mark cells on an infinite \(k\)-dimensional board (\(\mathbb Z^k\)). The player who marks a set of cells congruent to a given polyomino (an ``animal'') wins the game. Following the convention of the game of Go, it is supposed that black begins the game. Clearly, the best white can achieve is a draw, thus under convention, white wins if white can prevent black from reaching the desired constellation. On a finite board this yields a well-defined game; one says that white wins on an infinite board if white can avoid losing for arbitrary long time. Due to the lack in higher dimensional imagination, it is difficult to find explicit winning strategies for the players. The paper presents two methods to produce winning strategies (for black and white) in higher dimensions. As applications, improved bounds for the winning dimensions of certain polyominoes and new bounds for hypercube Tic-Tac-Toe with and without diagonals are obtained.