On 3-colorable non-4-choosable planar graphs

Abstract

An L-list coloring of a graph G is a proper vertex coloring in which every vertex v gets a color from a list L(v) of allowed colors. G is called k-choosable if all lists L(v) have exactly k elements and if G is L-list colorable for all possible assignments of such lists. Verifying conjectures of Erdos, Rubin and Taylor it was shown during the last years that every planar graph is 5-choosable and that there are planar graphs which are not 4-choosable. The question whether there are 3-colorable planar graphs which are not 4-choosable remained unsolved. The smallest known example far a non-4-choosable planar graph has 75 vertices and is described by Gutner. In fact, this graph is also 3 colorable and answers the above question. In addition, we give a list assignment for this graph using 5 colors only in all of the lists together such that the graph is not List-colorable. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.