An Inductive Proof that Lights Out Configurations are Invertible

Keivan Mirzaei

公開日: 2025/9/22

Abstract

We give an elementary inductive proof of a classical result for the \emph{Lights Out problem} on graphs: from any configuration of vertices, one can reach the complementary configuration by a sequence of moves, where a move consists of toggling a vertex and its neighbors. Unlike the usual linear-algebraic approach over $\mathbb{F}_2$, our argument is purely combinatorial.

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