Sorting by Strip Swaps is NP-Hard
This solves a computational complexity problem in combinatorial algorithms, showing SbSS is intractable for general instances.
The paper proves that Sorting by Strip Swaps (SbSS) is NP-hard by reducing it from Block Sorting, using cage and hinge gadgets to map strip swaps to block moves.
We show that \emph{Sorting by Strip Swaps} (SbSS) is NP-hard by a polynomial reduction of \emph{Block Sorting}. The key idea is a local gadget, a \emph{cage}, that replaces every decreasing adjacency $(a_i,a_{i+1})$ by a guarded triple $a_i,m_i,a_{i+1}$ enclosed by guards $L_i,U_i$, so the only decreasing adjacencies are the two inside the cage. Small \emph{hinge} gadgets couple adjacent cages that share an element and enforce that a strip swap that removes exactly two adjacencies corresponds bijectively to a block move that removes exactly one decreasing adjacency in the source permutation. This yields a clean equivalence between exact SbSS schedules and perfect block schedules, establishing NP-hardness.