OTHER GAMES -- overview information

As the opportunities arise, I collect information from the net regarding other games, and stash it here. This is not intended to be a comprehensive site, but I do enjoy abstract and mathematical games, as well as many card games, word games, and board games -- at least those with a fairly compact set of rules and clear objectives. Solitaire games are usually just my cup of tea. I am not interested in multi-player games (e.g., bridge), simulation (flight-sim), role-playing (D&D), or physical (pinball) games. Chacun a son gout.

This page is intended as a repository for information about those games of this sort for which I have just a little information (usually, links to a useful site). Games for which I have a more fully-developed individual page are not mentioned here; go to the parent page

Special note: The "bible" for abstract game players has long been "Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays", but it has been hard to find. Now I learn it is again available.n

Most commonly analyzed games

Games for which detailed information is available include those covered in the usenet groups rec.games.board, rec.games.abstract, etc. FAQ's, when available, are located at rtfm.mit.edu in /pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/rec/games/board (etc.). You can get there from here.

In particular, there's really no point in my trying to do better than the FAQs for newsgroups devoted to

• chess,
• go,
• backgammon, or
• chinese-chess.
• (Wanted: the best single link of this type for backgammon.)

There is an extensive FAQ for rec.puzzles; an HTML version is available; here are instructions for finding and using the FAQ. Topics include many of these games (chess, go, Rubik's cube, tic-tac-toe, etc.)

There's a site for the checkers-playing program Chinook, which has plenty of information about the game and will let you play against the machine.

I'm sure there is a good site for Chinese Checkers, too, but I haven't gone to look for one. I did come across this Chinese Checkers server. More info.

There's a good FAQ for Scrabble. (I also have citations for anagrams -- programs to solve Scrabble hands.) You can play Scrabble interactively at telnet eel.st.usm.edu 7777, or see http://elf.udw.ac.za/scrabble/ For some reason no one seemed to list the letter distributions, so I did.

I have here a link to Webversi by Searchlight Software, an Othello (Reversi) game to play via WWW; there's a link there to some information about the game generally. Here's a little more: Othello Pages. I have a note that telnet to faust.uni-paderborn.de 5000 will allow interactive play; so will

	telnet 138.15.10.2 500

     internet OTHELLO server     ( igord@research.nj.nec.com )
    NEC Research Institute, NJ, USA    (C) Igor Durdanovic, 1993-96

Less commonly analyzed games

Odd bits of information which float my way on games which I find intriguing from a theoretician's perspective: (These files are offered as is -- I haven't double-checked the statements other people made.)

• First up HAS to be a site allowing you to play (get this now) Rock, Scissors,Paper! Best of all, you can even cheat! Ah, the joys of the internet.
• Chomp, with an additional citation for Chomp (and Sylver Coinage). More on chomp
• Sylver coinage (take turns selecting denominations)
• Lights Out! (each move affects neighbors on a 2-D grid) (Some additional references1, 2, 3. Also a zipped postscript paper from somewhere.
• Gale (like Hex)
• Quod (I haven't really played this myself)
• Eleusis (see the pattern, deduce the rule),
• Instant Insanity (align four coloured cubes). You can play this on the web. Note: I have seen an analysis of this in an old (1970s?) combinatorics book (softcover, tall, short, typewritten; that's not much of a citation, I know, but if you need me to look for this in our library let me know.)
• boss the "Boss" puzzle or "16" puzzle (slide the squares qround to restore the picture of Niagara Falls),
• Soma Cubes.
• Monopoly (and a link to MONOPOLY and to some literature on it.) More
• Risk (the board game)
• Hunt the Wumpus (First game I ever played on a computer -- circa 1974 ! Boy, am I old!)
• Set (and a link to The SET ® Home Page) -- look for cards forming sets. Here's a pretty long analysis and a short summary of the mathematician's viewpoint. More.
• FreeCell" (the card game which comes with Windoze (tm).) More. More. More.
• Rubik's cube (more information available from a group theoretic perspective.)
• Pentaminoes and Polynominoes -- the dominoes variants
• Billiards (Pool) -- a couple of book recommendations
• Nim -- discussion. Also a variant on Nim, with citation. More.
• Nine Mens Morris -- citations for.
• wari -- pointer to analysis of Wari (=Awari). More.
• yahtzee -- pointer to an optimal Yahtzee player.
• The NOMIC Page ; there's also a NOMIC FAQ.
• You can play the interactive Peg Game,
• Analysis of peg solitaire
• the computer solitaire game (erroneously) called Mahjongg (and another) (and another).
• Trax; a play-by-mail is possible (mail pbmserv@gamerz.net with a subject of help).
• A couple of good links for Conway's game of Life; another.
• Descriptions of several other Conway games.
• Ilan Vardi analyzes (Yahoo) Dots
• Dots and Boxes: discussion and literature review(!) More
• There's quite a bit of information about forming and solving mazes, too.
• Here's a description of the pieces used in the Tangoes puzzles.
• Likewise, a description of the Spirograph gears
• I rephrased the rules of Rummikub in mathematicians' language, since the phrasing that was used on the game was not clear to me. (Experienced players might want to check that I've got them right!) I still seek a mathematical algorithm for deciding whether or not a set is "divisible". I have found simulations of this game for the Amiga and for DOS machines. More. Mail.
• Blackjack and casino things. More.

Homeless messages

Here's more stuff awaiting at least a cursory entry in the list above. ataxx bulg_solit chess,chess2 craps draugthts germanstyle lammas links lists memory misc playstring polynominos puz puzzles rec_puzzles_faq seventhguest/ solitarie.posty sommer/ sommercube spacequest triv_purs twixt wff zertz zillions

Analysis-free zone

Somewhere I have some of my own notes on situation-puzzle games -- the classic Adventure (UNIX), Wanderer (PC), and some later games such as Space Quest V. If you need this information let me know and I'll try to find it. I have at least kept my maps of the mazes in the Adventure game. I suppose this is what's at the heart of games like Rogue and Zork; there's a site for roguelike games.

Games software for the Amiga

Steve Belczyk has made some games available over the net: Battleship, Reversi, Minesweeper, Maze.

Games for Kids includes Adventure, Hunt the Wumpus, the Peg Game, other old favorites.

And then there's "Other" -- the games I haven't sat down yet to think about. Some of them may have been analyzed by others; some may not have been, although I think as I play with them about what's possible, what the probabilities are, and so on. In this category I might include: Dominoes, Hi-Ho Cherry-O (can you tell I'm a dad?), Clue, Battleship, Stratego, Risk, Gomoku/Pente, Trouble/Sorry/Parcheesi, Abalone, all the various card games (see Rules According to Hoyle) and everything in Games Magazine. That should keep me busy!

• My home page is just a short introduction to the pages I maintain
• The parent page to this one is also concerned with mathematical games. The focus of that page is on the handful of games for which I have done my own analyses or written simulations. It also includes the best links I use for general gaming information on the internet.
• I keep a large set of pages which provide a thematic introduction to the subject areas of modern mathematics, complete with answers to thousands of more or less common questions.

This page is

	http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/uses-math/games/other/index.html