# New Snake-in-the-Box Records via Snakepit Surgery and Learned Construction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.15270 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.15270/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 23 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Jul 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Thinking Fast and Slow with Deep Learning and Tree Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.08439/) (2017)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The snake-in-the-box problem asks for a longest induced path in the hypercube graph Qn. We find a length-191 snake in dimension n=9, the lowest dimension where the maximum is unknown, improving the previous record of 190 that had stood for 14 years. We also establish new lower bounds in dimensions 10-13. To find these records, we introduce snakepits, collections of disjoint snakes, to expand the search space and open new routes between snakes. This motivates our new Snakepit-in-the-Box benchmark, which seeks maximal edge counts when allowing multiple components. Finally, we introduce Beam Anchor, a search-supervised learned constructor algorithm that finds 100 inequivalent length-190 snakes in dimension 9.