[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"branding":3,"analytics":7,"article-snake-in-the-box-puzzle-record-falls-after-14-years":10,"sections":35},{"siteName":4,"siteTagline":5,"publisherName":4,"contactEmail":6},"The Revision","Tech news, decoded.","editor@therevision.news",{"gaMeasurementId":8,"adsenseClientId":9},"G-ZW2MV82GYR","ca-pub-8533917693782264",{"article":11},{"id":12,"slug":13,"title":14,"dek":15,"body_md":16,"tags_json":17,"published_at":18,"created_at":19,"updated_at":20,"status":21,"review_note":22,"review_notes":23,"image_url":22,"persona_id":22,"persona_name":22,"section":24,"tags":25,"sources":30,"feedback":34,"feedback_at":22,"cost_usd":34,"total_tokens":34},9579,"snake-in-the-box-puzzle-record-falls-after-14-years","Snake-in-the-Box Puzzle Record Falls After 14 Years","A length-191 snake in 9-dimensional hypercube space beats a 14-year-old record, found via a new technique called snakepit surgery.","A math puzzle that sat stuck at 190 for 14 years just moved to 191.\n\nResearchers found a new longest \"snake\" - a path that never touches itself - inside a 9-dimensional hypercube, a classic combinatorics problem called snake-in-the-box. The previous best, a length-190 snake, had stood since 2012. To break it, the team invented \"snakepits\": groups of separate snakes searched together, which opened up new routes between them that a single-snake search would miss. They also pushed new lower bounds in dimensions 10 through 13, and built a learned search tool called Beam Anchor that independently found 100 different length-190 snakes in dimension 9.\n\nSnake-in-the-box structures aren't just abstract puzzles - they show up in coding theory and circuit design, where you want paths that avoid interference between nearby points. Dimension 9 matters because it's the smallest size where mathematicians still don't know the true maximum, so any progress here is a genuine open-problem result, not just a bigger number. The method matters as much as the result: snakepits and Beam Anchor are offered as reusable tools, with their own new benchmark, for chasing records in higher dimensions.\n\nFourteen years for one extra step is a reminder that in combinatorics, \"incremental\" can still mean genuinely hard - and dimension 9's full answer is still unsolved.","[\"mathematics\",\"combinatorics\",\"research\",\"machine-learning\"]","2026-10-02T04:00:00.000Z","2026-10-03T01:29:19.327Z","2026-10-03T01:29:23.535Z","published",null,[],"science",[26,27,28,29],"mathematics","combinatorics","research","machine-learning",[31],{"name":32,"url":33},"arXiv cs.AI","https:\u002F\u002Farxiv.org\u002Fabs\u002F2607.15270",0,{"sections":36},[37,41,45,49,54,58,61,66,71,76,81,86,91,96],{"name":38,"slug":39,"count":40,"latest_published_at":18},"AI","ai",5896,{"name":42,"slug":43,"count":44,"latest_published_at":18},"Security","security",837,{"name":46,"slug":47,"count":48,"latest_published_at":18},"Policy","policy",438,{"name":50,"slug":51,"count":52,"latest_published_at":53},"Deals","deals",317,"2026-10-01T22:00:00.000Z",{"name":55,"slug":56,"count":57,"latest_published_at":18},"Hardware","hardware",199,{"name":59,"slug":24,"count":60,"latest_published_at":18},"Science",171,{"name":62,"slug":63,"count":64,"latest_published_at":65},"Consumer Tech","consumer-tech",155,"2026-10-01T19:54:10.000Z",{"name":67,"slug":68,"count":69,"latest_published_at":70},"Dev Tools","dev-tools",96,"2026-10-01T16:57:03.000Z",{"name":72,"slug":73,"count":74,"latest_published_at":75},"Software","software",93,"2026-09-30T21:41:11.000Z",{"name":77,"slug":78,"count":79,"latest_published_at":80},"Startups","startups",90,"2026-10-01T21:55:22.000Z",{"name":82,"slug":83,"count":84,"latest_published_at":85},"Gaming","gaming",53,"2026-10-02T02:50:39.000Z",{"name":87,"slug":88,"count":89,"latest_published_at":90},"General","general",50,"2026-09-30T21:37:54.000Z",{"name":92,"slug":93,"count":94,"latest_published_at":95},"Reviews","reviews",31,"2026-09-28T14:31:34.000Z",{"name":97,"slug":98,"count":99,"latest_published_at":100},"How-To","how-to",7,"2026-10-01T09:00:00.000Z"]