Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-topology-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2014/3/b/ii/solution

Apply the first extraction move to the two outer occurrences of , then cyclically rotate the word to expose the two occurrences of :
In the third line the repeated letter for the move is , and the intervening string is , whose inverse is . Rename as a new edge label. The final word has the standard form .
Each same-direction repeated pair represents a projective-plane summand, so the classification theorem for surfaces identifies this word with the connected sum of three real projective planes:
Thus the surface has crosscap number three. As a check, the original identifications make all six polygon vertices equivalent, leaving one vertex, three edges and one face. Its Euler characteristic is , consistent with that crosscap count.

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