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Nimble

The game of Nimble is much the same as the game of Scoring. The only difference is that now there is no limitation on the length of a move. (This makes one chip game trivial.)


This applet requires Sun's Java VM 2 which your browser may perceive as a popup. Which it is not. If you want to see the applet work, visit Sun's website at http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp, download and install Java VM and enjoy the applet.


Nimble is Nim in disguise. (Each chip represents the size of a heap or a number of check marks. Another one was Turning Turtles.) After learning to play the Scoring game it may not come as a surprise. For a single chip, the Sprague-Grundy function is trivial: g(p) = p. Summing up a few games directly leads to the theory of Nim.

Reference

  1. E.R.Berlekamp, J.H.Conway, R.K.Guy, Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays, v1, A K Peters, 2001.
  2. J.H.Conway, On Numbers And Games, A K Peters, 2001
  3. R. K. Guy, Fair Game, Comap's Explorations in Mathematics, 1989

Copyright © 1996-2008 Alexander Bogomolny

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