[BlackFingolfin]

But none of this explicit. This is at best an announcement of a potential proof. But it isn't a proof yet.

Also curious: in the end of the paper they talk about having "weakly solve" Othello... the paper overall reads really strangely.

[dfan]

"Weakly solving" a game is a technical term. If you have weakly solved a game, you can play perfectly (achieve the optimal result) when the game starts from its initial position. If you have strongly solved it, you can play perfectly starting from any position.

[BlackFingolfin]

Sorry, I was unclear: I know what weakly solved means. What I find curious is that the title and abstract refer to "solved", and don't mention what they actually mean. To me "solved" would suggest "strongly solved". But perhaps equating "solved" with "weakly solved" is default in this area? Still, I would like expect an abstract to say something like that explicitly.

But given the overall state of that paper I think this is a side concern at best anyway.

[jmmcd]

"weakly solve" is not curious. Read from the start, they define this.

[sdwr]

This looks like a George W "Mission Accomplished" moment.

- the game is obviously known to be a draw

- but we don't have computational power to enumerate that

- so test a bunch of game states

- and confirm that none of them are wins

- ???

- it's solved! Trust me!

[sebzim4500]

The concept of "weakly solved" is not original to this effort. IIRC checkers was weakly solved for years but is now strongly solved.