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Hive is PSPACE-Hard

  • Benjamin Rin*
  • , Daniël I. Andel
  • *Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Hive is an abstract strategy game played on a table with hexagonal pieces. First published in 2001,
it was and continues to be highly popular among both casual and competitive players. In this
paper, we show that for a suitably generalized version of the game, the computational problem of
determining whether a given player in an arbitrary position has a winning strategy is PSPACE-hard.
We do this by reduction from Formula Game, which is first reduced to an intermediate problem
we call Formula Game Geography, after which the latter is reduced to our decision problem.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication13th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2026)
PublisherDagstuhl Publishing
Pages13:1–13:20
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 2026

Publication series

NameLeibniz International Proceedings in Informatics
ISSN (Print)1868-8969

Bibliographical note

Forthcoming, 2026

Keywords

  • Computational complexity
  • Combinatorial games
  • Hive
  • PSPACE-hardness
  • Formula Game
  • Generalized Geography

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