%0 Journal Article %T The combinatorial essence of supercompactness %A Christoph Wei£¿ %J Mathematics %D 2010 %I arXiv %X We introduce combinatorial principles that characterize strong compactness and supercompactness for inaccessible cardinals but also make sense for successor cardinals. Their consistency is established from what is supposedly optimal. Utilizing the failure of a weak version of square, we show that the best currently known lower bounds for the consistency strength of these principles can be applied. %U http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.2040v1