We exhibit an unambiguous $k$-DNF formula that requires CNF width $\tilde{\Omega}(k^2)$, which is optimal up to logarithmic factors. As a consequence, we get a near-optimal solution to the Alon--Saks--Seymour problem in graph theory (posed in 1991), which asks: How large a gap can there be between the chromatic number of a graph and its biclique partition number? Our result is also known to imply several other improved separations in query and communication complexity.

Improved the separation to near-quadratic, which is optimal.

We exhibit an unambiguous $k$-DNF formula that requires CNF width $\tilde{\Omega}(k^{1.5})$. Our construction is inspired by the board game Hex and it is vastly simpler than previous ones, which achieved at best an exponent of $1.22$. Our result is known to imply several other improved separations in query and communication complexity (e.g., clique vs. independent set problem) and graph theory (Alon--Saks--Seymour problem).