One Shot, Twenty-One Balls: A Computer-Assisted Proof of a Single-Stroke Total Clearance in an Idealized Model of Snooker
Abstract
Snooker folklore holds that no single stroke can pocket all twenty-one object balls. We examine the claim in an explicit model: twenty-two equal disks on a rectangle with six pocket points, under constant rolling deceleration, frictionless collisions with normal restitution, and lossy specular cushions. We exhibit a configuration and a stroke, and prove in interval arithmetic that every stroke in an explicit box around it pockets all twenty-one object balls, so the set of successful strokes has positive measure. That set is a ribbon: every speed from 9.3213 to 12 m/s works, while the certified window of directions is 9.4813e-43 radians wide, a number explained by a first-order analysis of twenty near-grazing collisions. A second configuration, a near-frozen cluster, has a certified window 9.4e-4 radians wide, thirty-nine orders of magnitude wider; its certificate uses Taylor models of degree six. The strokes with a given list of events form a semialgebraic set, and the endpoints of the windows are algebraic numbers. For the regulation opening position we state the corresponding conjecture, and show that if it holds with a regular witness then a finite certified search establishes it.
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BibTeX
@misc{kantor2026shot,
title = {{One Shot, Twenty-One Balls: A Computer-Assisted Proof of a Single-Stroke Total Clearance in an Idealized Model of Snooker}},
author = {Avner Kantor},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2607.12995},
eprint = {2607.12995},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.12995},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - One Shot, Twenty-One Balls: A Computer-Assisted Proof of a Single-Stroke Total Clearance in an Idealized Model of Snooker
AU - Avner Kantor
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/30
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2607.12995
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.12995
AB - Snooker folklore holds that no single stroke can pocket all twenty-one object balls. We examine the claim in an explicit model: twenty-two equal disks on a rectangle with six pocket points, under constant rolling deceleration, frictionless collisions with normal restitution, and lossy specular cushions. We exhibit a configuration and a stroke, and prove in interval arithmetic that every stroke in an explicit box around it pockets all twenty-one object balls, so the set of successful strokes has positive measure. That set is a ribbon: every speed from 9.3213 to 12 m/s works, while the certified window of directions is 9.4813e-43 radians wide, a number explained by a first-order analysis of twenty near-grazing collisions. A second configuration, a near-frozen cluster, has a certified window 9.4e-4 radians wide, thirty-nine orders of magnitude wider; its certificate uses Taylor models of degree six. The strokes with a given list of events form a semialgebraic set, and the endpoints of the windows are algebraic numbers. For the regulation opening position we state the corresponding conjecture, and show that if it holds with a regular witness then a finite certified search establishes it.
ER -