More Variations on Shuffle Squares

We study an abstract variant of squares (and shuffle squares) defined by a constraint graph G, specifying which pairs of words form a square. So, a shuffle G-square is a word that can be split into two disjoint subwords U and W (of the same length), which are joined by an edge. This setting generalizes a recently introduced model of shuffle squares based on word symmetry and permutations. By using the probabilistic method, we provide a sufficient condition for a constraint graph G guaranteeing the avoidability of shuffle G-squares. By a more-elementary method (known as Rosenfeld counting), we prove that G-squares are avoidable over an alphabet of size 4α, α>1, provided that the degree of every word of length n in G is at most αn. We also introduce the concept of the cutting distance between words and state several conjectures involving this notion and various kinds of shuffle squares. We suspect that, for every k⩾2, there is a constant ck such that every even word can be turned into a shuffle square by cutting it in at most ck places and rearranging the resulting pieces. We present some computational, as well as theoretical evidence in favor of this conjecture.