A Ternary Square-free Sequence Avoiding Factors Equivalent to abcacba

Abstract

We solve a problem of Petrova, finalizing the classification of letter patterns avoidable by ternary square-free words; we show that there is a ternary square-free word avoiding letter pattern xyzxzyx. In fact, we characterize all the (two-way) infinite ternary square-free words avoiding letter pattern xyzxzyx characterize the lexicographically least (one-way) infinite ternary square-free word avoiding letter pattern xyzxzyx show that the number of ternary square-free words of length n avoiding letter pattern xyzxzyx grows exponentially with n.