We classify all 3 letter patterns that are avoidable in the abelian sense. A short list of four letter patterns for which abelian avoidance is undecided is given. Using a generalization of Zimin words we deduce some ...

While a characterization of unavoidable formulas (without reversal) is well-known, little is known about the avoidability of formulas with reversal in general. In this article, we characterize the unavoidable formulas ...

We find an infinite word w on four symbols with the following property: Two occurrences of any block in w must be separated by more than the length of the block. That is, in any subword of w of the form xyx, the length of ...