a skew tableau with one less square. Now apply a jeu de taquin slide to turn that skew tableau into a straight one, which will free one square on the outside border. Then fill this square with the negative of the value that was originally removed at the top-left corner; this negated value is considered part of a new tableau rather than of the original tableau, and its position will not change in the sequel. Now as long as the original tableau has some entries left, repeat the operation of removing the entry x of the top-left corner, performing a jeu de taquin slide on what is left of the original tableau, and placing the value −x into the square so freed. When all entries of the original tableau have been handled, their negated values are arranged in such a way that rows and columns are increasing. Finally one can add an appropriate constant to all entries to obtain a Young tableau with positive entries. Applications Jeu de taquin is closely connected to such topics as the Robinson–Schensted–Knuth correspondence, the Littlewood–Richardson rule, and Knuth equivalence. References Combinatorial algorithms Algebraic combinatorics