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I'd like to know whether the following simple problem has been studied before and if any solution is known.

Let G be a finite (MxN) grid, S a subset of G's cells (the "crumbs"). Two crumbs are said to be (locally) connected if their coordinates differ by at most one (i.e., if drawn as squares, they share at least one corner point).

Now, one can try to connect the crumbs (their set as a whole) by permutating the lines and the columns of the grid. In other words, the goal is to come up with a permutation of the lines and a permutation of the columns so that any two crumbs in the resulting grid are connected by a chain of (locally) connected crumbs.

Question: is there always a solution?

I don't quite know how to attack it. For lack of a better idea, I have written a raw program that looks for solutions by brute force (it generates the permutations at random and checks whether the resulting grid has its crumbs connected). The program has so far always found solutions on smallish (10x10 or 7x14) grids, and larger grids are clearly out of reach of its simplistic strategy (it would take too long to stumble at random across a solution).

Here is an example of a grid solved by the program:

Initial grid (crumbs are denoted by X's, empty cells by dots):

   0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 
 0 X . X X . X . X X .
 1 X . . . . X . . . .
 2 . . X . . . . X . X
 3 . X . . X . X . . X
 4 . . . X . . . . . .
 5 X X . . . X X . X .
 6 . . . X . . . . X .
 7 X . X . . X . . . .
 8 X . . . X . . X X .

Solution:

   6 1 4 7 8 2 9 3 5 0
 1 . . . . . . . . X X
 4 . . . . . . . X . .
 5 X X . . X . . . X X
 8 . . X X X . . . . X
 7 . . . . . X . . X X
 0 . . . X X X . X X X
 3 X X X . . . X . . .
 6 . . . . X . . X . .
 2 . . . X . X X . . .

Naturally, the problem can readily be generalized to any dimension d > 2. I suppose other generalizations could be considered.

Thanks in advance,

Yann David

NB: I cross-posted the question on CS theory stack exchange at http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/9015/connecting-cells-by-line-and-column-permutations-in-a-finite-grid, I'm not aware of any way to connect the two questions.

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As a guess, a large square grid with crumbs along the main diagonal and a single crumb in the top-right corner may have no solution. – Austin Mohr Nov 18 '11 at 1:33
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@AustinMohr: Your example of "crumbs" may be connected by a common permutation of the rows and columns. Rotate the top row to the bottom of the matrix and then rotate the first column around to become the last column. The off-diagonal entry is then adjacent to the diagonal entries. – hardmath Nov 18 '11 at 15:10
@hardmath It appears you are correct. Perhaps some kind of rotation argument like you used here can be generalized. That is, if one could show that, for any board, there is a move that results in strictly fewer connected components, then every board would indeed be solvable. – Austin Mohr Nov 18 '11 at 19:29
Simultaneous crosspost is discouraged. – Tsuyoshi Ito Nov 18 '11 at 20:22

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