Journées Informatique et Géométrie

How far can a stack of n identical blocks be made to hang over the edge
of a table? The question dates back to at least the middle of the 19th
century and the answer to it was widely believed to be of order log n.
Recently, we (Paterson and Zwick) c...

How far can a stack of n identical blocks be made to hang over the edge
of a table? The question dates back to at least the middle of the 19th
century and the answer to it was widely believed to be of order log n.
Recently, we (Paterson and Zwick) constructed n-block stacks with
overhangs of order n^{1/3}, exponentially better than previously thought
possible. The latest news is that we (Paterson, Peres, Thorup, Winkler
and Zwick) can show that order n^{1/3} is best possible, resolving the
long-standing overhang problem up to a constant factor.

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