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On a Restricted Class of Block Design Games

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Jane W. Di Paola*
Affiliation:
The City University of New York
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Block design games have been developed by Richardson (12) and by Hoffman and Richardson (8), who proved a number of theorems concerning such games by studying the number of elements in a blocking coalition. Hoffman and Richardson listed as unsolved (except for PG(2, 3)) the following problem: What is the minimum number of elements in a blocking coalition of a block design game?

This note considers blocking coalitions in those games that are dual to block designs having λ = 1 and rk > 0. For such games certain blocking coalitions are shown to be related to sets of mutually disjoint blocks in the design to which the game is dual. In particular, for Steiner triple systems the largest odd-numbered set of mutually disjoint triples is shown to yield a minimum blocking coalition in the dual.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Mathematical Society 1966

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