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A006075 Minimal number of knights needed to cover an n X n board.
(Formerly M3224)
+0
6
1, 4, 4, 4, 5, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 21, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40, 46, 52, 57, 62 (list; graph; listen)
OFFSET

1,2

COMMENT

How many knights are needed to occupy or attack every square of an n X n board?

Upper bounds for the terms after a(20) = 62 are: 68, 75, 82, 88, 96, 102, ... (see Frank Rubin's web site).

REFERENCES

David C. Fisher, On the N X N Knight Cover Problem, Ars Combinatoria 69 (2003), 255-274.

M. Gardner, Mathematical Magic Show. Random House, NY, 1978, p. 194.

Anderson H. Jackson and Roy P. Pargas, Solutions to the N x N Knights Cover Problem, J. Rec. Math., Vol. 23 #4, pp. 255-267, 1991

Bernard Lemaire, Knights Covers on N X N Chessboards, J.Recreational Mathematics, Vol. 31-2, pp. 87-99, 2003.

Frank Rubin, Improved knight coverings, Ars Combinatoria 69 (2003), 185-196.

LINKS

J. Danaher, Results for 15 X 15 board

Lee Morgenstern, Knight Domination [Much material, including optimality proofs for the values given in this entry]

Frank Rubin, Contest Center Web Site, Knight Coverings for Large Chessboards [Much material, including many illustrations]

Frank Rubin, Illustration of three 52-knight coverings of an 18 X 18 board (See Frank Rubin's web site, from which this is taken, for many further examples)

Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics, Link to a section of The World of Mathematics (1).

Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics, Link to a section of The World of Mathematics (2).

EXAMPLE

Illustrations for a(3) = 4, a(4) = 4, a(5) = 5 (o = empty square, X = knight):

ooo .. oooo .. ooooo

oXo .. oXXo .. ooKoo

XXX .. oXXo .. oKKKo

...... oooo .. ooKoo

.............. ooooo

CROSSREFS

A006076 gives number of inequivalent ways to cover the board using a(n) knights, A103315 gives total number.

Adjacent sequences: A006072 A006073 A006074 this_sequence A006076 A006077 A006078

Sequence in context: A036858 A131957 A127932 this_sequence A074904 A010304 A130331

KEYWORD

nonn,hard,nice

AUTHOR

N. J. A. Sloane (njas(AT)research.att.com).

EXTENSIONS

Comment from John Danaher (jsd(AT)mit.edu), Oct 24 2000: The value a(15) = 37 given by Jackson and Pargas is wrong. A simulated annealing-based program I wrote found several complete coverages of a 15 X 15 board with 36 knights.

Terms (or bounds) through a(26) updated by Frank Rubin (contestcen(AT)aol.com), May 22 2002

a(20) = 62 added from the Context Center web site by N. J. A. Sloane (njas(AT)research.att.com), Mar 02 2006

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Last modified July 4 09:27 EDT 2009. Contains 160562 sequences.


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