Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2020
There is a Turing computable embedding $\Phi $ of directed graphs $\mathcal {A}$ in undirected graphs (see [15]). Moreover, there is a fixed tuple of formulas that give a uniform effective interpretation; i.e., for all directed graphs $\mathcal {A}$ , these formulas interpret $\mathcal {A}$ in $\Phi (\mathcal {A})$ . It follows that $\mathcal {A}$ is Medvedev reducible to $\Phi (\mathcal {A})$ uniformly; i.e., $\mathcal {A}\leq _s\Phi (\mathcal {A})$ with a fixed Turing operator that serves for all $\mathcal {A}$ . We observe that there is a graph G that is not Medvedev reducible to any linear ordering. Hence, G is not effectively interpreted in any linear ordering. Similarly, there is a graph that is not interpreted in any linear ordering using computable $\Sigma _2$ formulas. Any graph can be interpreted in a linear ordering using computable $\Sigma _3$ formulas. Friedman and Stanley [4] gave a Turing computable embedding L of directed graphs in linear orderings. We show that there is no fixed tuple of $L_{\omega _1\omega }$ -formulas that, for all G, interpret the input graph G in the output linear ordering $L(G)$ . Harrison-Trainor and Montalbán [7] have also shown this, by a quite different proof.