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This question was the motivation behind an earlier question of mine; having thought about it some more, that question seems nontrivial and the connection is actually pretty tenuous anyways, so I've decided to ask this directly:

For $\mathcal{K}\subseteq\omega_1$, we let $G_{CD}(\mathcal{K})$ be the game defined as follows (which is a special case of a broad class of games defined by Montalban): players $1$ and $2$ alternate building objects by finite extensions (with passing allowed) - in player $1$'s case, a single linear order $L^1$, and in player $2$'s case an array of linear orders $L^2_i$ ($i\in\omega$). Player $2$ wins iff $(i)$ each $L_i^2$ is in $\mathcal{K}$, and $(ii)$ if $L^1\in\mathcal{K}$ then $L^1\cong L^2_i$ for some $i\in\omega$. Put another way, player $1$ is trying to either build an element of $\mathcal{K}$ which player $2$ doesn't build, or trick player $2$ into building something not in $\mathcal{K}$.

If $\mathcal{K}$ is unbounded then $G_{CD}(\mathcal{K})$ can't be a win for player $2$ by $\Sigma^1_1$-bounding, and assuming CH it's easy to build an unbounded $\mathcal{K}$ such that $1$ doesn't have a winning strategy in $G_{CD}(\mathcal{K})$ either. However, in the absence of CH things seem much harder: intuitively, there are continuum-many strategies we need to defeat but only $\omega_1$-many "choices" involved in creating $\mathcal{K}$.

My question is:

Does ZFC alone prove that there is some $\mathcal{K}\subseteq\omega_1$ such that $G_{CD}(\mathcal{K})$ is undetermined?

"Obviously" the answer should be yes, but I don't see it immediately.

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  • $\begingroup$ Maybe you can try to simulate a Gale-Stewart game as your game so you can get (in ZFC) an undetermination ? I'm thinking especially a game played on $2^{\omega\times\omega}$ since then you could encode countable ordinals at each step $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 30, 2017 at 7:35
  • $\begingroup$ @Max Remember the obstacle I mention in my question: whereas a general (Gale-Stewart) game is determined by continuum-many "atomic facts," these games are determined by merely $\omega_1$-many "atomic facts." There are fundamentally fewer CD-games than GS-games, in a precise sense, which gets in the way of any naive simulation attempt that I can see (which is of course the natural thing to try here); I've asked a separate question about this obstacle on its own. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 9, 2017 at 18:09
  • $\begingroup$ I can prove that if player $1$ has a winning strategy, then $\mathcal{K}$ has an uncountable subset that when viewed/reinterpreted as a set of reals is $\mathbf{Σ^1_2}$. Would that help? $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 31, 2019 at 19:31
  • $\begingroup$ @DmytroTaranovsky I don't immediately see how, but it might. (Can you sketch a proof? At the moment I don't see why it should be true, since player $1$ doesn't have to build an element of $\mathcal{K}$ to win.) $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 31, 2019 at 19:45
  • $\begingroup$ We start with a winning player $1$ strategy and $ω$ elements of $\mathcal{K}$, and use that to find another element of $\mathcal{K}$, and then iterate. If you like, I can give a full explanation (including how to get $\mathbf{Σ^1_2}$ complexity) as an answer. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 31, 2019 at 20:02

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