The paper treats the question whether there always exists a minimal nondeterministic finite automaton of n states whose equivalent minimal deterministic finite automaton has α states for any integers n and α with n ≤ α ≤ 2n. Partial answers to this question were given by Iwama, Kambayashi, and Takaki (2000) and by Iwama, Matsuura, and Paterson (2003). In the present paper, the question is completely solved by presenting appropriate automata for all values of n and α. However, in order to...