In this paper, we introduce a new class of polyominoes, called closed paths, and we study the primality of their associated ideal. Inspired by an existing conjecture that characterizes the primality of a polyomino ideal by nonexistence of zig-zag walks, we classify all closed paths which do not contain zig-zag walks, and we give opportune toric representations of the associated ideals. To support the conjecture, we prove that having no zig-zag walks is a necessary and sufficient condition for the primality of the associated ideal of a closed path. Finally, we present some classes of prime polyominoes viewed as generalizations of closed paths.

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In this paper we introduce some monomial orders for the class of closed path polyominoes and we prove that the set of the generators of the polyomino ideal attached to a closed path forms the reduced Gröbner basis with respect to these monomial orders. It is known that the polyomino ideal attached to a closed path containing an $L$-configuration or a ladder of at least three steps, equivalently having no zig-zag walks, is prime. As a consequence, we obtain that the coordinate ring of a closed path having no zig-zag walks is a normal Cohen-Macaulay domain.

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