Abstract:

The game Spot-It, played with 55 cards each pair of which is known to have exactly 1 symbol in common (of the 8 symbols printed on the cards), is well-known for its design via a projective plane of order 7. A similar game can be constructed with words, each pair of which has a single letter in common, provided we can find the configuration of a projective plane within a graph constructed of words. In this talk, Professor Edward Doolittle of First Nations University of Canada will demonstrate an efficient method for searching for projective plane configurations and related configurations in graphs obtained from
dictionaries in various languages, including English, French, and some of the Indigenous languages of Canada, in particular Plains Cree written in Standard Roman Orthography (SRO) and Plains Cree written in Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics.