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Physical Zero-Knowledge Proof for Ball Sort Puzzle

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Unity of Logic and Computation (CiE 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13967))

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Abstract

Ball sort puzzle is a popular logic puzzle consisting of several bins containing balls of multiple colors. Each bin works like a stack; a ball has to follow the last-in first-out order. The player has to sort the balls by color such that each bin contains only balls of a single color. In this paper, we propose a physical zero-knowledge proof protocol for the ball sort puzzle using a deck of playing cards, which enables a prover to physically show that he/she knows a solution with t moves of the ball sort puzzle without revealing it. Our protocol is the first zero-knowledge proof protocol for an interactive puzzle involving moving objects.

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Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Daiki Miyahara for a valuable discussion on this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics, The University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan

    Suthee Ruangwises

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  1. Suthee Ruangwises
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Correspondence to Suthee Ruangwises .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Gianluca Della Vedova

  2. Kutaisi International University, Kutaisi, Georgia

    Besik Dundua

  3. University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

    Steffen Lempp

  4. University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

    Florin Manea

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Ruangwises, S. (2023). Physical Zero-Knowledge Proof for Ball Sort Puzzle. In: Della Vedova, G., Dundua, B., Lempp, S., Manea, F. (eds) Unity of Logic and Computation. CiE 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13967. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36978-0_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36978-0_20

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-36977-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-36978-0

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