Comment by moritzwarhier
7 months ago
I know him from proving NP-hardness of the game Sokoban:
https://erikdemaine.org/papers/PushingBlocks_CGTA/
And I clicked this submission because of his name, after all the time.
I didn't fully go through or understand the proof, but it was a refreshing addition to the classic problems I had to understand for college at the time.
Didn't need it, just fed my curiosity.
And when I clicked this link, my curiosity was fed again.
Seems like it's worth having heard of him, even as a non-scientist, because his subjects are just so interesting. Reminds me of Scott Aaronson in that regard.
That paper does not prove that Sokoban is NP-hard. It does, however, cite an earlier paper proving the stronger result that Sokoban is PSPACE-complete:
Culberson, Joseph. "Sokoban is PSPACE-complete." (1997). https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/f551dfd8-c8e6-4e78-883...
See also https://erikdemaine.org/papers/NCL_TCS/
Yes, correct, and mentioned in the abstract. Sorry, I was imprecise and wrong.
Thanks for the links!