Lars,
Barry Traver wrote:
I'm accustomed to doing mathematical analysis of game positions.
Examples: my "Giant and Dwarfs" game (published in 99'er Home
Computer Magazine decades ago), my "Jump-a-Peg" puzzle program
(published in MICROpendium also decades ago), my "NimRow" game
(adapted from one of my - mostly mathematical - "Coney Games"
collection I released decades ago), etc., etc. (I did port over to
REALbasic "NimRow," "31 or Die!", and "Tic Tac Toe Philadelphia
Style," which is now a magic trick in addition to being a card game.)
Like the card trick program, many of these were inspired by Martin
Gardner, especially by the "Mathematical Games" column he wrote for
years for the magazine Scientific American.
What I meant to say was not "in addition to being a card game" (which it
isn't, although there is a card trick related to Tic Tac Toe in Martin
Gardner's book Mathematics, Magic, and Mystery) but "in addition to
being a con game."
All of my "Coney Games" are "con games," i.e., simple to learn and
seemingly more than fair to the con man's victim,, but actually much
favoring the con man (i.e., in the modern situation, favoring the
computer against a human opponent, so that often the human has _no_
chance of winning) (In Elizabethan English, the word "cony" meant
"rabbit," i.e., the con man's victim. A fascinating popular book of the
time on the forerunners to the more modern "shell game" is titled The
Cony-Catcher.)
Barry Traver
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