We construct $3$-query relaxed locally decodable codes (RLDCs) with constant alphabet size and length $\tilde{O}(k^2)$ for $k$-bit messages. Combined with the lower bound of $\tilde{\Omega}(k^3)$ of [Alrabiah, Guruswami, Kothari, Manohar, STOC 2023] on the length of locally decodable codes (LDCs) with the same parameters, we obtain a separation between RLDCs ... more >>>

We show that for all $\varepsilon>0$, for sufficiently large prime power $q\in\mathbb{N}$, for all $\delta>0$, it is NP-hard to distinguish whether a $2$-Prover-$1$-Round projection game with alphabet size $q$ has value at least $1-\delta$, or value at most $1/q^{1-\varepsilon}$. This establishes a nearly optimal alphabet-to-soundness tradeoff for $2$-query PCPs ... more >>>