An upper bound on the proper hat guessing number of graphs

Abstract

We study the proper hat guessing game on graphs, introduced by Adriaensen et al. in Hat guessing with proper colorings. In this game, the players are seated on the vertices of a graph $G$ and assigned hats from a set of $k$ colors such that the resulting assignment forms a proper coloring. The visibility of each vertex is limited to the hat colors of their neighborhood. Then they must simultaneously output a guess about the color of their own hat. The players win if at least one guess is correct. A parameter related to this problem is the proper hat guessing number $\operatorname{HG}_{P}(G)$ that is the maximum number of colors $m$ such that the players can guarantee a winning strategy. Motivated by the work of Shurman et al. \cite{shurman2026upper}, we establish the first upper bound that depends both on the number of vertices $n$ and the maximum degree $Δ$ in the case where $Δ\geq \frac{n}{e+1}$. This result leads us to show that the proper hat guessing number of the binomial random graph $G_{n,1/2}$ is bounded above by $cn$, where $c \approx 1.366$. Finally, we prove that graphs of maximum degree $(1-γ)n$ for some fixed $γ\in (0,1]$ cannot have $\operatorname{HG}_{P}(G) = (2-o(1))n$.