Sergi Elizalde ; Yixin Lin - Penney's game for permutations

dmtcs:16361 - Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science, July 8, 2026, vol. 28:1, Permutation Patterns 2025 - https://doi.org/10.46298/dmtcs.16361
Penney's game for permutationsArticle

Authors: Sergi Elizalde ; Yixin Lin

We consider the permutation analogue of Penney's game for words. Two players, in order, each choose a permutation of length $k\ge3$; then a sequence of independent random values from a continuous distribution is generated, until the relative order of the last $k$ numbers coincides with one of the chosen permutations, making that player the winner.
We compute the winning probabilities for all pairs of permutations of length 3 and some pairs of length 4, showing that, as in the original version for words, the game is non-transitive. Our proofs introduce new bijections for consecutive patterns in permutations. We also give some formulas to compute the winning probabilities more generally, and conjecture a winning strategy for the second player when $k$ is arbitrary.


Volume: vol. 28:1, Permutation Patterns 2025
Section: Special issues
Published on: July 8, 2026
Accepted on: April 30, 2026
Submitted on: August 18, 2025
Keywords: Combinatorics, 05A05, 60C05, 05A19

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