While a characterization of unavoidable formulas (without reversal) is well-known, little is known about the avoidability of formulas with reversal in general. In this article, we characterize the unavoidable formulas ...

Abstract Consider the set of those binary words with no non-empty factors of the form xxx^R. Du, Mousavi, Schaeffer, and Shallit asked whether this set of words grows polynomially or exponentially with length. In this ...

We show that there exists an infinite word over the alphabet {0,1,3,4} containing no three consecutive blocks of the same size and the same sum. This answers an open problem of Pirillo and Varricchio from1994.

We present an infinite family of formulas with reversal whose avoidability index is bounded between 4 and 5, and we show that several members of the family have avoidability index 5. This family is particularly interesting ...

We show that binary circular words of length n avoiding 7/3+ powers exist for every sufficiently large n. This is not the case for binary circular words avoiding k+ powers with k < 7/3

A vertex x of a graph G resolves two vertices u and v of G if the distance from x to u does not equal the distance from x to v. A set S of vertices of G is a resolving set for G if every two distinct vertices of G are ...

We perform an exact enumeration of the order-preserving maps of fences (zig-zags) and crowns (cycles). From this we derive asymptotic results.

Let A be a finite alphabet and f: A^* --> A^* be a morphism with an iterative fixed point f^\omega(\alpha), where \alpha{} is in A. Consider the subshift (X, T), where X is the shift orbit closure of f^\omega(\alpha) and ...

We classify all 3 letter patterns that are avoidable in the abelian sense. A short list of four letter patterns for which abelian avoidance is undecided is given. Using a generalization of Zimin words we deduce some ...