Francis Alan Dane Diola’s Post

Before the first computer game called “Pong” hit the streets, Chinese Checkers was ubiquitous family fun. It features several marbles that move along a series of holes grouped into a six-pointed star shape. As in traditional checkers, the marbles can move to empty spaces or jump over adjacent pieces, with the goal of getting all the pieces to one side of the board. Contrary to its name, Chinese Checkers has nothing to do with China. It is a variation of a game called Halma (meaning “jump” in Greek). Halma features a square board. A star-shaped version was invented in Germany around 1880. Originally called Stern-Halma, the star-shaped game was published by the German game and puzzle company Ravensburger in 1892. The game arrived in America in the late 1920s under the name Hop Ching checkers, and, later, Chinese star checkers. It was advertised as “a game from the Orient for all ages,” but this backstory was invented entirely for marketing, to give the product an air of mysticism. While six-pointed stars such as the one on the Chinese checkers game board have a long history in many cultures, including some Asian spiritual traditions, the board’s star shape actually originated in Germany, decades before the game’s fictional association with China. Nevertheless, Chinese checkers is the name that stuck in the American lexicon. #ClaimsKrewe

A long-posed question by mathematicians and children alike is if the card game Beggar My Neighbor (similar to 'Egyptian Rat Screw' or 'Slaps') could possibly go on forever; in other words, is there an infinite loop that the game could enter into? I have been independently researching this question for a long time, from brute force (with over 5*10^11 simulations of the game) to methodical pattern searching. With an online community contributing to this problem for over 30 years- started by the famous mathematician John Conway- a solution has been found by Brayden Casella! Check out the paper, my first ever publishing:

Hey friends! Today, let’s talk about something super cool called strings! Imagine strings are like magic words that we can use in our computer games and apps. Just like how we play with toys, we can play with these strings!What Can We Do with Strings? Here are some fun things we can do with our magic words:Count the Letters: We can find out how many letters are in our magic word! It’s like counting how many blocks we have in a tower. Take a Piece: We can grab just a part of our magic word. It’s like taking one toy from a big toy box! Change Letters: If we want to change some letters, we can! Like turning “cat” into “bat” by swapping the "c" for a "b." Split It Up: We can break our magic word into smaller pieces. It’s like cutting a big cookie into little bites! Why Are Strings Important? Strings help us do lots of things, like:Making Games: When we want to show names or messages. Finding Things: If we want to see if our magic word has a certain letter, like looking for the letter "A" in “Apple.” Let’s Have Fun! So next time you see words on the screen, remember they’re like magic strings that help us do amazing things! What’s your favorite word? Let me know below! 👇✨ 

Toward the end of last year, Matthew Chapa effectively challenged me to find a game with a nerdier subject matter than Charty Party (a party game I recommended about making charts). Challenge accepted. This is my first attempt. First, to clarify, the criteria is that the subject matter itself has to be nerdy - Dungeons and Dragons, a game played by nerds (such as myself), doesn't cut it. So, today's recommendation: Cat in the Box, by Bezier Games. They bill this as a "quantum trick taking game." I LOVE trick taking games (think Bridge, Spades, Hearts, etc.) and this one has a fun and bizarre twist: it's basically Schrodinger's Cat, the card game - your cards have no suit until you play them! Get it? You don't know the state of the card until you've observed it. As you play the hand, you and your opponents play cards, declaring the suits as you do so. But you have to be careful how you play your hand - you can end up being forced to play a card that can't exist, causing a paradox and ending the round. It's a mind-bendingly fun take on a card game. And I would argue that quantum physics is a pretty nerdy subject matter. But is it nerdier than Charty Party? Please chime in. https://lnkd.in/eM4JTbY2