2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/61949Murasugi sums can be defined as readily for Morse maps to the circle of (arbitrary) link complements in the 3-sphere as for fibrations over the circle of (fibered) link complements in the 3-sphere. As one application, I show that if a knot K has free genus m, then there is a Morse map from its complement to the circle (representing the relative homology class of a Seifert surface for K) with no more than 4m critical points.16 pages, 13 figuresGeometric Topology57M25; 57M27text