n = 32 proved ★O=
Proven
- new result
- optimal
- exact
Citation record n-032
lowerDaniel after Burns, Massaccesi 2026, GitHub (confirmed T-051)
Bounds
- Proved by
- Evan Daniel 2026
- Kind
- counting
- Scope
- Unrestricted independent rotations with disjoint interiors; boundary contact allowed.
- Note
- evand/square-packing (26 September 2026) states from a weighted closed cover of [0,6]^2 of 13,085 points and total weight 3171350535386/10^11 = 31.713505354 < 32, certified at margin zero over its D4 fundamental region by two exact checkers, with a Lean theorem minSide 32 = 6 from that one computational hypothesis. Its CREDITS.md says the work was produced with an AI agent under human direction. It supersedes Nagamochi's general 1 + sqrt(23).
- Source
- [evand square-packing 2026]
- Evidence
E-n032-evand-closed-cover-report
The reported value, verified here.
0
Solved: the verified bounds meet.
Results in the register
T-007 V0 C1 Nagamochi · 2026-08-31 · 321 cases
for
T-045 V3 C3 wand125 after Tokoharu, Levy, Stromquist, Nagamochi, Burns, Massaccesi · 2026-09-29 · 15 cases
Rectangle-density lower bounds replayed at 15 counts in
T-051 V3 C3 Daniel after Burns, Massaccesi · 2026-09-29 · n = 32
Claim and records
- Claim
- : the lower half by Evan Daniel's weighted closed cover of 26 September 2026, the upper half by the grid.
The cover is 13,085 D4-invariant rational points of [0,6]^2, total weight 3171350535386/10^11 = 31.713505354 < 32, such that every closed unit square in [0,6]^2 captures weight at least one, a boundary point counting. A packing at side below 6 would scale to 32 disjoint closed unit squares capturing at least 32.
The margin is zero at the grid, so the source decides the cover by exhaustive exact pose-space subdivision of its D4 fundamental region (zeromargin.py, 7,200 root boxes), and a Lean theorem derives minSide 32 = 6 from that one checker hypothesis.
The complete zeromargin.py sweep was replayed here on 27 September 2026 with the source's runner, checker and settings: all 7,200 roots certified, 164,130 boxes, every root's census equal to the source's.
The source's third checker, zmx2, was run here on the same cover on 29 September 2026 with --pair-points: all 3,600 roots of the D4 region certified, 1,405,342 boxes, none uncertified. zmx2 is a second implementation of the same subdivision by the same author and agent. Its point test derives from zeromargin.py's, but it closes germs by its own pair lemma and decides by exact integer tests on outward-rounded binary64 enclosures of chord ends. On 2 October 2026 zmx2 was run here again with --sym-atoms, without the D4 fold, over all 28,800 roots of the whole pose space: none uncertified, and every root's census equal to the source's run.
Evan Daniel, evand/square-packing, building on Burns's and Massaccesi's method, with an AI agent under human direction as its CREDITS.md says. - Composition
- Compound. The upper half is the grid replayed exactly by the basic-bounds checker (E-basic-grid-upper), a construction its replay establishes, so under epistemics.md's Scope and Composition the equality takes the C of its lower half, which sets the rung.
The lower half rests on complete replays here of the source's zero-margin pose-space subdivision by two checkers whose method values differ: zeromargin.py, exact-algebraic, over the 7,200 roots of the D4 fundamental region (E-n032-evand-closed-cover-source-run), and zmx2, interval-certified, over the 3,600 roots of the D4 region (E-n032-evand-closed-cover-zmx2-replay) and, with --sym-atoms and no fold, over all 28,800 roots of the whole pose space (E-n032-evand-zmx2-full-sym-replay). That is C3, with the two methods shown beside the rung.
The two checkers differ in how germs are closed (zmx2's pair lemma Z and pair dynamic programme over lines one unit apart, against zeromargin.py's monotone chains), in arithmetic and in their parsers. Taken as zeromargin.py's run and zmx2's run without the fold, they no longer share the D4 fold, the region or any symmetry premise: the zmx2 side rests on its own Lemma A (search/ZMX2.md section 4.9, proved, and checked against the code by the 2 October review) where zeromargin.py's rests on the fold, which the source's Lean development kernel-checks, and nothing in zeromargin.py corresponds to Lemma A.
The common mode is what remains shared: the author and AI agent and the statement decided; the point-in-square formulation, G0-G3 with the corner-and-vertex rule, one design in two arithmetics, which for a point cover is the primitive that decides most leaves; the pose parametrisation; and the branch-and-bound architecture. The source's Lean development kernel-checks the formulation on zeromargin.py's side, which bounds the common mode and does not remove it. The two checkers are separately written, not independent.
The point test is shared by derivation: on 1 October 2026 the source stated that zmx2 was written to be independent of zm_mixed.py only and that its author was permitted to read zeromargin.py, so Lemma P derives from zeromargin.py's G0-G3 (jlevy/squares#238, retained as packing/resources/web/evand-square-packing-2026-10-01/issue-238-author-2026-10-01.json). The brief that governed that reading was not public when this entry was reviewed. The source published it on 3 October, and the 4 October evand packet retains it (s12/tasks/s21-finish/xcheck.md, think-83zc): it forbids zm_mixed.py and its write-up and permits zeromargin.py, zmcheck and their write-ups, as the source said. - Next rung
- V4 and C4 need two adversarial AI reviews by distinct reviewers and a human oversight record, and none is retained; whether a mapped same-project review of another author's result counts toward them is the owner's decision. V5 needs the source's hypothesis-free Lean theorem s32_eq_6 built, which decides a generated box tree in the kernel with zeromargin.py only as the tree generator's untrusted oracle, and a human expert's review of the formalization. Mathlib's build cache became reachable on 2026-09-30, and the conditional s32_eq_six_of_checker and s13_eq_4 were built here (the 2026-09-28 packet's receipts/lean/). The cost that remains is compute: a probe puts s32_eq_6 at 14 to 28 CPU-hours emitted in about 320 parts of about 4 GB each, with 8 to 10 GB for the generator (think-angg).
Beside the rung, the source's zmx2 --full --pair-points --sym-atoms run was replayed here on 2 October (think-48e1, E-n032-evand-zmx2-full-sym-replay), which took the D4 fold out of what the two checkers share. It changes neither rung: it is evidence of the kind already held, a machine replay of the source's own checker with a mapped review, as section 8 of the 2 October review says, and what it changes is the composition that rung 4's reviewers and oversight record will read. - Significance
- An exact value for a case that was open, the first this record holds for s(k^2 - 4) with k >= 4, 0.204 above Nagamochi's closed form. S4 by the anchor "a reusable technique": the zero-margin closed cover decided by exhaustive pose-space subdivision, which the same author carried to and 45 (T-052, T-053) and wand125 to (T-054). Not S5: is not a central open case of this project.
- Novelty
- previously-published Present in an identified source
- Records
n = 32registerevidence 1evidence 2evidence 3evidence 4evidence 5evidence 6source 1source 2review 1review 2review 3
T-058 V3 C3 wand125 after Tokoharu, Daniel · 2026-09-29 · 100 cases
Rectangle-certificate ceiling
α·UB(n)proved for ..100;B·UB(n)on 64 grid rowsT-081 V0 C1 Daniel after Burns, Massaccesi · 2026-10-03 · 14 cases
for every integer from 5 up; are the cases held here
T-083 V3 C3 Karakuş · 2026-10-02 · 301 cases
for every nonsquare
T-085 V3 C3 Karakuş; chelokot · 2026-10-02 · 315 cases
Nagamochi 2005, Lemma 1 is false for every container with and
upper: replayed here; lower: replayed here
—
not rigid, numerically checked, numerical multiprecision
Evidence: E-translation-escape-not-rigid
Scope
Square 26 of the retained witness (witness id 27) translates 1 along (0, 1) with the packing still valid, so the configuration admits a non-trivial feasible motion; 5 of its 32 squares do. Every constraint is exactly affine in the slide parameter, so the arithmetic carries no linearization error, but the coordinates are the witness's own finite-precision transcription: this settles the retained configuration, not the true optimum. Rigidity and optimality are independent, and this bears only on the former.
7 evidence entries
E-kingbird-upper-register, E-nagamochi-lower, E-basic-grid-upper, E-n032-evand-closed-cover-report, E-n032-evand-closed-cover-source-run, E-n032-evand-closed-cover-zmx2-replay, E-n032-evand-zmx2-full-sym-replay
- [Kingbird] record catalogue
- [Nagamochi 2005] lower bound proof
- [evand square-packing 2026] lower bound proof
- [Friedman DS7] survey
— solved
. Established by a weighted closed cover with an exact exhaustive check, Evan
Daniel (2026), building on Sam Burns’s and Gustavo Massaccesi’s weighted exact-rational
covering method. The source’s CREDITS.md says the work was produced by Claude
(Anthropic) in a single session under human direction.
It is the first exact value this record holds for a case of the form with
; the source’s own literature search found none either.
The packing
The upper bound is trivial: the grid holds 36 unit squares, so it holds 32 with four cells empty, and . The record catalogue does not picture , and no arrangement below side 6 has ever been found. What is new is that none exists.
The lower bound
The certificate is 13,085 rationally weighted points of , total weight , such that every closed unit square inside , at every centre and every angle, captures weight at least , a point on its boundary counting. If 32 unit squares fit in a side , scaling by gives 32 squares of side above 1 with disjoint interiors in , each strictly containing a concentric closed unit square. Those 32 closed unit squares are pairwise disjoint, so they would capture at least 32 from a total of .
The margin is exactly zero at the container itself, where the grid’s tiling squares
share their boundary points with the cover, so no angle net can decide it.
The source’s checker zeromargin.py subdivides pose space exactly instead, over the
fundamental region of the cover’s exact D4 symmetry, and certifies every one of its
7,200 root boxes with no uncertified leaf.
A second, separately written checker, zmcheck, certifies 3,595 of its own 3,600 roots;
the five it leaves open are interior tile germs, which zeromargin.py closes.
Among the two earlier exact checkers, this cover has one complete certification and
99.86 % of a second; the source’s other cover, s32_shift_v1.txt, which proves the same
theorem but is not the one in Lean, is certified completely by both checkers.
A Lean theorem, s32_eq_six_of_checker, derives minSide 32 = 6 from the single
hypothesis that zeromargin.py run checks; the checker programs are not formalised.
The verified field rests on two complete replays here, and stands at V3/C3. The first
is of that exhaustive run (E-n032-evand-closed-cover-source-run): the
same runner, checker, certificate and settings, run in four legs on 27 September,
certify all 7,200 roots with the source’s totals: 164,130 boxes, maximum depth 27, and
no uncertified leaf, the one root that needs depth 30 closing there.
Every per-root record carries the census of the source’s record of the same root, box
for box, and the records are retained in the
packet’s receipts.
The review of 27
September read the Lean statement, the reduction and the checker’s exact paths and found
no mathematical defect.
The second, on 29 September, is of the source’s third checker, zmx2, run with
--pair-points over the same D4 region: it certifies all 3,600 of its roots with no
uncertified box (1,405,342 boxes, maximum depth 29), its totals equal to those the
source reports (E-n032-evand-closed-cover-zmx2-replay). zmx2 is a
second implementation of the same pose-space subdivision, by the source’s own agent.
It closes germs its own way, by a pair lemma and a pair dynamic programme over lines one
unit apart where zeromargin.py uses monotone chains, and it decides by exact integer
tests on outward-rounded binary64 enclosures of chord ends rather than in exact
rationals, so it assumes correctly rounded binary64 arithmetic on the host.
Its point test derives from zeromargin.py’s: on 1 October the source stated that
zmx2’s author was permitted to read zeromargin.py. Without the flag --sym-atoms
the fold cannot be taken out of zmx2’s side: run here with --full --pair-points over
the cover and its mirror, no symmetry assumed, zmx2 leaves 152 boxes uncertified, 38
in each of the four reflected images of one germ at an edge cell’s centre, at angles
under a third of a degree, where the float mass is at least . They are not
counterexamples
(receipt).
The source’s Lemma A, which bounds each box with both assignments of points to lines,
closes them: on 2 October zmx2 --full --pair-points --sym-atoms, built from the
checker source that made the source’s run, certified all 28,800 roots of the whole pose
space here, 11,268,760 boxes with none uncertified, every root’s census equal to the
source’s (E-n032-evand-zmx2-full-sym-replay;
packet). With that run the
two checkers no longer share the D4 fold, the region or any symmetry premise.
They still share the author and agent, the point-in-square formulation, the pose
parametrisation and the branch-and-bound architecture, which are the common mode, so
they are separately written and not independent.
The two entries differ in method, so the result shows two machine methods beside its
C3. The run was retained with the
28 September packet and
recorded as evidence on 29 September, after the author’s registration request in
jlevy/squares#238. This repository’s parent-core route cannot supply a method of its
own: it proves strict bounds through shrunken cores, and at side 6 the thirty-six grid
cells defeat any such threshold.
The Lean build and the zmcheck sweeps were not run here.
The source gives wand125’s rectangle-density as the previous lower bound. Before 2026 it was Nagamochi’s general closed form, . Corrected 2 October 2026: that closed form is now a reported bound, its published proof resting on Nagamochi’s Lemma 1, which Karakuş showed false (review). This register had recorded that proof as verified, its own error, logged as defect D-516.
Verification Code
The programs behind this case’s verified bounds, by their evidence.
The code column says how the code that ran stands to the code its producer used.
VERIFIERS.md says what each program is and whose it is.
| bound | evidence | run | code | programs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| verified lower | E-n032-evand-closed-cover-source-run |
replayed here | producer’s code | V-evand-zeromargin-py (external); V-compare-evand-s32-sweep (first-party, premises) |
| verified lower | E-n032-evand-closed-cover-zmx2-replay |
replayed here | producer’s code | V-evand-zmx2 (external); V-audit-evand-mixed-covers (first-party, premises) |
| verified lower | E-n032-evand-zmx2-full-sym-replay |
replayed here | producer’s code | V-evand-zmx2 (external); V-replay-evand-zmx2, V-audit-evand-mixed-covers (first-party, premises) |
| verified upper | E-basic-grid-upper |
replayed here | independent | V-check-basic-bounds (first-party) |