Word.ws English Dictionary

dancing links

dancing links noun: a technique for reverting the deletion of a node from a circular doubly-linked list, particularly useful for efficiently implementing backtracking algorithms.

Noun

dancing links (uncountable)

  1. A technique for reverting the deletion of a node from a circular doubly-linked list, particularly useful for efficiently implementing backtracking algorithms.
    Synonyms:
    DLX

Synonyms of dancing links

Origin of dancing links

The name was suggested by Donald Knuth, because iterations of the algorithm cause the links to interact as if in an “exquisitely choreographed dance”.

Questions about dancing links

What does dancing links mean?
Dancing links means a technique for reverting the deletion of a node from a circular doubly-linked list, particularly useful for efficiently implementing backtracking algorithms.
What part of speech is dancing links?
Dancing links is a noun.

Words near dancing links in the dictionary

  1. dancing bologna
  2. dancing girl
  3. dancing girls
  4. Dancing Israelis
  5. dancing juice
  6. dancing links
  7. dancing mania
  8. dancing manias
  9. dancing master's kit
  10. dancing master's kits
  11. dancing on nothing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dancing links (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “dancing links.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dancing_links. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.