Quiet Planting for $k$-SAT, Multiple Solutions of Arbitrary Geometry (opens in new tab)

Recent work on "quiet planting" in combinatorial optimization aims to generate instances with a hidden solution that is hard to recover, typically by making the planted distribution statistically indistinguishable from uniform for specific algorithms, such as statistical queries. A prominent example is planted $k$-SAT, where $O(n^{k/2})$ clauses can be planted while maintaining indistinguishability from uniform instances, evidenced by prior hard...