Some i-Mark games

Abstract: Let

S

be a set of positive integers, and let

D

be a set of integers larger than

1

. The game

i

-Mark

(S, D)

is an impartial combinatorial game introduced by Sopena (2016), which is played with a single pile of tokens. In each turn, a player can subtract

s i n S

from the pile, or divide the size of the pile by

d i n D

, if the pile size is divisible by

d

. Sopena partially analyzed the games with

S = [1, t - 1]

and

D = d

for

d o t e q u i v 1 p m o d t

, but left the case

d e q u i v 1 p m o d t

open. We solve this problem by calculating the Sprague-Grundy function of

i

-Mark

([1, t - 1], d)

for

d e q u i v 1 p m o d t

, for all

t, d g e q 2

. We also calculate the Sprague-Grundy function of

i

-Mark

(2, 2 k + 1)

for all

k

, and show that it exhibits similar behavior. Finally, following Sopena's suggestion to look at games with

| D | > 1

, we derive some partial results for the game

i

-Mark

(1, 2, 3)

, whose Sprague-Grundy function seems to behave erratically and does not show any clean pattern. We prove that each value

0, 1, 2

occurs infinitely often in its SG sequence, with a maximum gap length between consecutive appearances.

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