Word: nims
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
TIME [March 23] is holding out on two winning Nim combinations...
...Reader Rutchka's combinations are winners, but any Nim game can be won by using the 18 combinations given in TIME'S diagram. If he wishes, however, he can substitute his combinations for 6-5-3 and 6-4-3-1 in diagram and still win any game...
Actually the Marienbad match game is a variation of one of the most ancient of all two-person mathematical divertissements. Originating in China around 3000 B.C., it was given the name Nim by Harvard Mathematician Charles Leonard Bouton, who found, in 1901, that a strategy using move combinations based on binary numbers would make anyone a winner. All the successful player has to do is memorize them...
...fact, Nim is more of a trap than a game. The canny con man, with all the possible combinations locked in his head, graciously allows his victim to go first (see diagram). Since Nim's starting setup (7-5-3-1) is a winning combination itself, whoever tampers with it (i.e., the player who makes the first move) is doomed. But even if the wily match-sharp, out of courtesy or cunning, should agree to move first in an occasional game, he can still save the day by resorting to the memorized combinations as soon as the proper situation...
Many players have developed even simpler, if less foolproof systems of their own, based either on hunches or intuition. One nimble Nim player moves swiftly to reduce the rows of matches into either an odd number of rows each containing an unequal number of matches, or into an even number of rows each containing an equal number of matches. Says Bosley Crowther, Marienbad-applauding motion picture critic of the New York Times: "Once I get the other guy to make the first move, I remove even numbers of matches until he loses-almost always-unless he is playing the same...