# How to prove the nonexistence of cycles in the game of Chain Reaction?

Chain Reaction is a two player combinatorial game played on a $9 \times 6$ game board in which players Red and Green take turns to place a single atom of their color in an empty square or in a square that they control. Placing more than one atom in the same square creates a molecule.

The more atoms in a molecule, the more unstable it becomes. When a molecule becomes too unstable it splits and its atoms move to orthogonally adjacent squares, changing the color of the atoms in those squares to match their color. This can cause a chain reaction of splitting molecules.

Molecules in the four corner squares require two atoms to split. Molecules on the edge of the board require three atoms to split. Molecules in the center of the board require four atoms to split. Atoms of a splitting molecule each move in a different direction.

The game ends immediately after one player captures all of the atoms belonging to the other player. What I'm interested in is proving the nonexistence of cycles in any chain reaction because otherwise the next turn would never begin. How would I go about proving this? I don't know where to begin.

• Obviously adding an atom to a fully-loaded board will result in an infinite chain reaction, since there is not enough room for stable molecules. So you probably need some limits on board state to identify when infinite chains can't occur. Sep 4 '17 at 5:36
• Indeed. However, upon adding an atom to a fully loaded board one player would be wiped out and hence the game would immediately end. Any infinite chain reaction would necessarily have to keep at least one enemy atom untouched. Sep 4 '17 at 6:24
• In that case, I think it could be shown that any infinite chain reaction would affect every cell on the board, ending the game. Sep 4 '17 at 6:39
• Makes sense. Thanks for the insight. I'll try to formalize it now. Sep 4 '17 at 6:47