Variants of Wythoff Game With Terminal Positions or Blocking Maneuvers
Antoine Renard and Michel Rigo
Department of Mathematics
University of Liège
Allée de la Découverte 12 (B37)
B-4000 Liège
Belgium
Abstract:
We show how the software Walnut can be used to obtain concise proofs of
results concerning variants of the famous Wythoff game, incorporating
blocking maneuvers or additional terminal positions, as discussed by
Larsson (2011) and Komak et al. (2025), respectively. Our approach
provides automatic proofs that both confirm and extend their results,
and the same techniques apply equally to newly introduced variants.
Then, using classical techniques, we obtain new recursive and morphic
characterizations of Wythoff-type games in which the terminal positions
(x,y) satisfy x + y ≤ ℓ. The use of Walnut in combinatorial game theory
is relatively recent, and only a few examples have been investigated
so far. The Wythoff game, being directly connected to the Fibonacci
numeration system, proves especially well-suited to this kind of approach.
It permits us to solve instances for a fixed value of a parameter.
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(Concerned with sequences
A000201
A001950
A003622
A005206
A005374
A005375
A005376
A022342
A100721.)
Received December 17 2025; revised versions received December 26 2025; December 28 2025;
February 16 2026.
Published in Journal of Integer Sequences,
March 2 2026.
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