A Bookworm Climbs up the Polynomial Hierarchy: Meta-Restoration Complexity in Arithmetic Puzzles

In arithmetic puzzles, a partially specified arithmetic expression must be completed to make the computation valid. Arithmetical restoration puzzles require filling in missing digits, while cryptarithms involve assigning digits to letters. The Japanese term mushikui-zan ("bookwormed arithmetic") commonly refers to arithmetical restorations, where we imagine the missing digits have been eaten by a bookworm. Puzzle creator Yousuke Ikeda proposed a new type of puzzle in which a previously designed bookwormed arithmetic with multiplication - known to have a unique solution - has itself been "bookwormed", that is, partially erased. The goal is to restore the specified blanks so that the resulting bookwormed puzzle again has a unique solution. We further generalize this framework: for each k ≥ 2, we define level-k puzzles as those in which type-k blanks must be filled to make the resulting level-(k{-}1) puzzle uniquely solvable. We study the level-k versions of the Boolean satisfiability problem, and show that they form a hierarchy of Σ^P_k-complete decision problems, tightly matching the levels of the polynomial hierarchy. As applications, we show that the level-k arithmetical restoration problem with multiplication is Σ^P_k-complete, as is the level-k cryptarithm problem. On the positive side, we show that level-2 arithmetical restoration puzzles with addition are solvable in polynomial time.